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IMMUNE RESPONSE | COVID-19
How past pandemics may have caused Parkinson's
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(Image credit: Alamy)
MRI image of the brain (Credit: Alamy)
By David Cox
31st January 2022
Surviving a pandemic isn't always the end of the story – some viruses can have health effects that linger on for decades, eventually leading to a range of devastating diseases.
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In the 1960s, epidemiologists studying the long-term prognosis of survivors of the 1918 Spanish Influenza began to notice an unusual trend. Those who were born between 1888 and 1924 – meaning they were either infants or in young adulthood at the time of the pandemic – appeared to have been two or three times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease at some point in their life than those born at different times.

It was a striking finding. For while the potential neurological consequences of flu infections have been documented by doctors for centuries – there are medical reports of this which date back to 1385 – the sheer scale of the Spanish Flu, which infected around 500 million people globally, meant scientists could link a heightened risk of disease to the pandemic. //

Neurologists attempting to understand why this happens believe that each of these viruses are capable of crossing into the brain, and in some cases damaging the fragile structures which control the co-ordination of movement, known as the basal ganglia, initiating a process of degeneration which can lead to Parkinson's. //

"There are several studies highlighting that people who have recovered from Covid often have long-term central nervous system deficits including loss of sense of smell and taste, brain fog, depression, and anxiety. The numbers are troubling."

While Sars-CoV-2 can invade brain tissue, the scientific jury remains open on whether it will contribute to neurodegenerative disease. Coronaviruses are generally known as "hit and run viruses", because they tend to cause fairly short disease, even if this proves deadly in some cases. In contrast, DNA viruses such as Epstein-Barr can linger permanently in the body and are more associated with long-term illness.