Severe Cognitive Slowing Identified in Long COVID

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S Zhao et al. eClinical Medicine 2024; DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2024.102434. Open Access! Long COVID is associated with severe cognitive slowing: a multicentre cross-sectional study

Methods: To examine cognitive slowing, patients with post-COVID-19 conditions (PCC) completed two short web-based cognitive tasks, Simple Reaction Time (SRT) and Number Vigilance Test (NVT). 270 patients diagnosed with PCC at two different clinics in UK and Germany were compared to two control groups: individuals who contracted COVID-19 before but did not experience PCC after recovery. For the SRT, participants were required to press the spacebar when a large red circle appeared in the center of the screen.

.**The simple reaction time task and the number vigilance task can be tried online at [https://octalportal.com/pcc]..

Key finding:

  • There was pronounced cognitive slowing in patients with PCC, which distinguished them from age-matched healthy individuals who previously had symptomatic COVID-19 but did not manifest PCC. Cognitive slowing was evident even on a 30-s task measuring simple reaction time (SRT), with patients with PCC responding to stimuli ∼3 standard deviations slower than healthy controls. 53.5% of patients with PCC’s response speed was slower than 2 standard deviations from the control mean, indicating a high prevalence of cognitive slowing in PCC.
  • Comorbidities such as fatigue, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, and post-traumatic stress disorder did not account for the extent of cognitive slowing in patients with PCC.
  • Cognitive slowing on the SRT was highly correlated with the poor performance of patients with PCC on the NVT measure of sustained attention.
Results of simple reaction time       

My take (borrowed from authors): Using a 30-s web-based, self-administered psychomotor task, cognitive slowing in PCC can be reliably and easily measured as part of diagnostic work-up, and has potential to be a biomarker to track the progress of rehabilitation of PCC.

**The simple reaction time task and the number vigilance task can be tried online at [https://octalportal.com/pcc].