Neurological aspects of COVID-19

Research Center of Neurology, Moscow, Russia

The novel coronavirus pandemic presents one of the most significant challenges to modern healthcare, which involves all medical specialties. The current review encompasses the neurologic manifestations of COVID-19 — a yet to be defined problem. L. Mao et al. have found a third of COVID-19 patients to exhibit neurological symptoms the latter divided into three categories: central nervous system involvement (vertigo, headache, altered consciousness, acute cerebrovascular pathology, ataxia, and seizures) in 24.8% of patients, peripheral nervous system involvement (smell and taste disorders, neuropathy) — 8.9%, and muscle pathology (muscle pain, associated with creatine kinase increase) — 10,7%. Cerebrovascular pathology in 221 patients, described by Y. Li et al. occurred in 5.9% of cases — the majority was comprised by ischemic stroke, and as a whole it was associated with a more severe disease course. T. Oxley et al. described 5 patients (less than 50 years of age) with a large-vessel stroke occurring as a result of COVID-19. It has been shown that meningoencephalitis may be linked to COVID-19 — this review addresses several described cases. A case series of Guillain-Barre syndrome n patients with SARAS-CoV-2 infection is also described. Apart from that, it is well established that SARS-CoV-2 may lead to deterioration of concurrent somatic and (or) neurological diseases, worsening the prognosis.