Changes in dopamine markers found in 24 people with long COVID in Canada — ScienceAlert
Canadian researchers using PET scans found a lower signal of a dopamine nerve-ending marker in several areas of the brain’s striatum in 24 people with long COVID. As ScienceAlert reports, the lower signal was associated with more pronounced apathy, cognitive complaints, poorer memory test results, and slower performance on motor and reading tasks.
PET scan results
At the time of the study, none of the participants had an active SARS-CoV-2 infection, but all had persistent and debilitating symptoms after COVID-19. Participants reported a lack of motivation, and the group as a whole performed worse than healthy people of the same age on tests of memory and movement speed.
For the study, the scientists used positron emission tomography with a radioactive tracer that makes it possible to assess a marker of dopamine nerve endings. In several areas of the striatum — a structure associated with motivation, movement speed, and memory — the signal in the long COVID group was lower than in the healthy control group.
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According to the authors’ assessment, about 25% of the variation in individual symptoms in the group could be associated with indicators of dopaminergic nerve endings. This indicates an association between these indicators and symptoms, but does not establish a causal relationship.
Preliminary conclusions
The authors suggest that, in some people with long COVID, dopamine-releasing neurons may be damaged or lost. At the same time, PET scanning measures a protein at nerve endings rather than neuron density directly, so the study is preliminary in nature.
The scientists noted that future studies in larger controlled groups should confirm the robustness and generalizability of these results. They also hypothesized the potential use of drugs that affect the dopamine system for certain patients, but such medicines may have significant side effects. Study author Jeffrey Meyer has a patent application for a dopamine-related method of treating long COVID. The work was published in the journal eBioMedicine.
