Can COVID-19 pandemic boost the epidemic of neurodegenerative diseases?
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Can COVID-19 pandemic boost the epidemic of neurodegenerative diseases? Alexei Verkhratsky1,2* , Qing Li3, Sonia Melino4 , Gerry Melino4
and Yufang Shi3,5*
Abstract The pandemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) presents the world with the medical challenge associated with multifactorial nature of this pathology. Indeed COVID-19 affects several organs and systems and presents diversified clinical picture. COVID-19 affects the brain in many ways including direct infection of neural cells with SARS-CoV-2, severe systemic inflammation which floods the brain with pro-inflammatory agents thus damaging nervous cells, global brain ischaemia linked to a respiratory failure, thromboembolic strokes related to increased intravascular clotting and severe psychological stress. Often the COVID-19 is manifested by neurological and neuropsychiatric symptoms that include dizziness, disturbed sleep, cognitive deficits, delirium, hallucinations and depression. All these indicate the damage to the nervous tissue which may substantially increase the incidence of neurodegenerative diseases and promote dementia. Keywords: SARS-Cov-2, COVID-19, Systemic inflammation, Brain, Cognitive deficits, neurodegeneration The second wave of COVID-19 pandemic engulfs the world with number of people infected with SARS-Cov-2 raised over 56 millions with virus claiming more than 1.4 millions of lives [1–4]. These numbers are au pare with another epidemic that slowly but certainly swamps the world – the epidemic (as it was defined by Robert Katzman in 1976 [5]) of neurodegenerative diseases, which propagate through our rapidly ageing population. Along with the rapid changes in living environment and lifestyles, the number of people suffering from neurodegenerative disorders, that include vascular dementia, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson disease, frontotemporal dementia, various tauopathies and so forth are estimated at 60–70 millions worldwide and these numbers are rising with projection of doubling within next 20 years [6–8]. * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] 1 Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PT, UK 3 CAS Key Laboratory of Tissue Microenvironment and Tumor, Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 Yueyang Road, Shanghai 200031, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
The numbers of death from AD alone increased by 146% between year 2000 and year 2018 [9]. Although the main battlefield of neurodegenerative disorders is the brain, these diseases are title connected with the overall body state, with the onset and course of neurodegenerative diseases being substantially affected by lifestyle and somatic pathologies. Major peripheral disease, including trauma, sepsis, gastrointestinal disorders, kidney pathologies metabolic abnormalities and infections associated with systemic inflammation exacerbate the evolution of neurodegeneration [10–13]. Fu
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