Small Number of Covid Patients Develop Severe Psychotic Symptoms

Like with PANS/PANDAS triggered by an infection, COVID patients can have an alternate immunological response and present with psychological symptoms either in lieu of or in combination with physical symptoms. Also, doctors acknowledge that some neurotoxins are crossing the blood-brain barrier, which in turn caused symptoms rather than the infection itself going into the brain. Like many with PANS/PANDAS, patients are experiencing persistent immune activation, which leads to memory issues and brain fog. Doctors studying psychosis in COVID are left with many of the same questions out PANS PANDAS doctors and researchers continue to ask; what is the natural disease course, will symptoms linger, will they be prone to further exacerbation, and so on.

“A small number of Covid patients who had never experienced mental health problems are developing severe psychotic symptoms weeks after contracting the coronavirus…. Medical experts say they expect that such extreme psychiatric dysfunction will affect only a small proportion of patients. But the cases are considered examples of another way the Covid-19 disease process can affect mental health and brain function… there is now ample evidence of many other symptoms, including neurological, cognitive and psychological effects, that could emerge even in patients who didn’t develop serious lung, heart or circulatory problems…. Experts increasingly believe brain-related effects may be linked to the body’s immune system response to the coronavirus and possibly to vascular problems or surges of inflammation caused by the disease process. “Some of the neurotoxins that are reactions to immune activation can go to the brain, through the blood-brain barrier, and can induce this damage,” said Dr. Vilma Gabbay, a co-director of the Psychiatry Research Institute at Montefiore Einstein in the Bronx.”

Read New York Times article.