Pamela Davis, the study’s co-author said: “The factors that play into the development of Alzheimer’s disease have been poorly understood, but two pieces considered important are prior infections, especially viral infections, and inflammation.
“Since infection with SARS-CoV2 has been associated with central nervous system abnormalities including inflammation, we wanted to test whether, even in the short term, COVID could lead to increased diagnoses.”
The team looked at health records of 6.2 million adults from the United States who had no prior diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
They divided the subjects into two groups: those who had confirmed diagnosis of Covid and those who didn’t.
More than 400,000 people were enrolled in the coronavirus group, while 5.8 million made the non-infected group.
The researchers concluded that those who overcame the virus had a 50 to 80 percent higher risk of developing dementia in the following year.
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