Neurological manifestations in mild and moderate cases of COVID-19

The coronavirus disease due to SARS COVID-2 emerged from Wuhan city in China in December 2019 and rapidly spread to more than 200 countries all over the world as a global health pandemic. Its primary presentation is respiratory and cardiac. However, some neurological manifestations are also reported. We tried to explore the reported neurological manifestations in a group of non-hospitalized mild and moderate COVID-19 patients. We contacted 107 patients via phone calls and e-mail messages, within 10 days of clinical presentation. The collected data regarded the neurological and non-neurological symptoms of the disease using a questionnaire that collected medical information of each patient.

It is found that 100% of patients have been reported with at least one neurological symptom during the first 10 days of COVID-19 presentation. The most common were headache which recorded 72% of the total. Then anosmia–dysgeusia which reached 52%, then myalgia with 44%, fatigue with 33% and dizziness with 32%. While the less common was numbness, migraine, loss of concentration, and seizures.

There are many neurological manifestations found to be very common in COVID-19 patients even in mild cases, which when added to the increasing reports of serious cases of Guillain–Barre syndrome, acute necrotizing encephalopathy, myelitis, stroke, and encephalitis in COVID-19 patients support CNS invasion of the virus and assures the importance of neurological assessment of COVID-19 patients both in the acute phase of infection and after recovery for potential neurological sequelae.