Published in:
01-03-2021 | Coronavirus | COVID-19
Neurological manifestations of coronavirus disease 2019: exploring past to understand present
Authors:
Ishita Desai, Rajat Manchanda, Niraj Kumar, Ashutosh Tiwari, Mritunjai Kumar
Published in:
Neurological Sciences
|
Issue 3/2021
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Abstract
SARS-CoV-2 infection, resulting in Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has significantly affected the entire world. It was labelled a pandemic by World Health Organization. Although it commonly produces respiratory symptoms, neurological features have been described. Neurological manifestations may vary from non-specific symptoms such as headache, dizziness, myalgia and/or fatigue, olfactory or taste dysfunction to specific syndromes including meningitis, stroke, acute transverse myelitis and Guillain-Barre syndrome. This review describes potential pathogenetic mechanisms and neurological manifestations of COVID-19 along with its management. Considering structural and pathogenetic similarity of SARS-CoV-2 with SARS-CoV and MERS viruses, we compared their neurological manifestations and mentioned few features expected in COVID-19 in future. Interestingly, many COVID-19 cases may present with pure neurological manifestations at onset with non-neurological features manifesting few days later and we propose the term “Neuro-COVID syndrome” for such cases. Awareness of neurological manifestations may facilitate its management and improve outcome in such patients.