MidHudson News is reporting a new study by researchers at the New York Medical College and Westchester Medical Center Health Network has found some patients still suffer from persistent neuropsychiatric issues months after recovering from an acute COVID-19 infection. Those issues include diminished focus, forgetfulness, and difficulty making decisions and multitasking. Stephen Ferrando, M.D., the Har Esh Professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the medical college, was the lead author of the study. “...[W]e found that many of these individuals were in fact not thinking clearly and it was not just about depression or medical comorbidities but something that the virus was doing in the brain that leads to residual cognitive problems. So, the takeaway message is that for patients who are complaining of post-COVID-19 cognitive issues, there may very well be something there. These complaints are not imagined. They are not psychosomatic and they need to be taken seriously.” The 60 participants in the study underwent neuropsychological, psychiatric, medical, functional and quality-of-life assessments six to eight months after suffering from COVID-19. Researchers examined the ability to remember things, to focus, to think abstractly, to plan and organize, as well as psychiatric measures, and found differences between the two groups of participants that were both statistically and clinically significant. Ferrando said, “And while we found that these types of cognitive problems are definitely correlated to how sick they were when they had COVID-19 (some described their illness as the ‘the worst flu they ever had’ for instance). None of these people were in the ICU.” Though their first research study on the topic is just newly published, Ferrando said researchers are already conducting further research with the same group of people. Read the full story at MidHudsonNews [dot] com.