Coronavirus capable of invading brain: study

A worrying turn of events. This virus continues to surprise and not in a good way.

A vaccine cannot get here too soon.

It is a very important finding, and if it is confirmed with further studies it may change the way we see the disease. Until now doctors have been treating patients with neurological symptoms as a likely encephalitis (brain inflammation) produced by the immune reaction of the body, but now it may be necessary to consider it a possible case encephalopathia (brain disease) directly produced by the virus, which changes the way of treating it.

It is also important because the viral replication killing neurons may have long term consequences on the patients, infection of a small percentage of respiratory tissue, that regenerates quickly, may not even be detected and the person considered an asymptomatic case, but if also a small percentage of the brain tissue is damaged the person may have irreversible loss of function that may not be found out without specific tests.