Many COVID-19 patients have reported various neurological symptoms – the well-known brain fog, but also headaches and decreased cognitive function over months and extended periods of time. This even without serious infection or hospitalization. The research seems to be swinging between reporting neurological damage or not (not, as I reported here) – despite the quality of many of these pieces of research there is still inconsistency.

This one just out (in non-human models it must be noted) reports on how COVID seems to induce severe brain inflammation and respective injuries that seem related to reduced blood flow to the brain including brain cell damage and death not to mention small brain bleeds.

What is of interest, and worrying, is that this was not correlated with severity of other symptoms – in fact these symptoms seem to affect indiscriminately, unrelated to severity or other contributing factors such as age or pre-existing conditions. This explains why some people complain of these long-lasting neurological symptoms despite not being hospitalized.

And that is enough information for me to still be cautious!

Reference:
Ibolya Rutkai, Meredith G. Mayer, Linh M. Hellmers, Bo Ning, Zhen Huang, Christopher J. Monjure, Carol Coyne, Rachel Silvestri, Nadia Golden, Krystle Hensley, Kristin Chandler, Gabrielle Lehmicke, Gregory J. Bix, Nicholas J. Maness, Kasi Russell-Lodrigue, Tony Y. Hu, Chad J. Roy, Robert V. Blair, Rudolf Bohm, Lara A. Doyle-Meyers, Jay Rappaport, Tracy Fischer. 
Neuropathology and virus in brain of SARS-CoV-2 infected non-human primates. 
Nature Communications, 2022; 13 (1)
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29440-z

As many of you know I have done plenty of work into personality and so found this study interesting.

Dusanee Kesavayuth of Kasetsart University in Bangkok, Thailand analysed data from 2,000 adults aged between 50 and 75 in the British Household Panel Survey and found some interesting correlations between personality and satisfaction after stopping work (for different reasons).

For example, in people who retired as part of mandatory retirement they found that those who scored higher on conscientiousness had higher levels of satisfaction. This may be surprising as conscientious is related to often to structure and getting stuff done and being effective in the workplace. But it seems to act as psychological buffer probably because conscientious people may be more proactive in finding new fulfilling life patterns. Also interesting is that those high on extraversion had lower satisfaction suggesting they miss the social aspects of work.

I found this research particularly interesting and also points to being more proactive and using personality to prepare people for retirement and making sure they get the most out of this.

Reference:
Dusanee Kesavayuth, Robert E. Rosenman, Vasileios Zikos. 
Leaving the labor market: Exit routes, personality traits and well-being. 
PLOS ONE, 2022; 17 (3): e0263670
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263670