By Alistair Smout

LONDON (Reuters – Mild COVID-19 patients who don’t have any of the traditional COVID symptoms can show deteriorated attention or memory up to six months later, according to a British University study.

Long COVID is a chronic condition that affects cognitive functions, forgetfulness, and fatigue. It can also cause problems with concentration, as well as memory loss, which may lead to a decrease in attention span.

Participants who were previously positive for COVID-19 but didn’t report any other long-term COVID symptoms, were required to perform cognitive and memory exercises.

Researchers found participants had significantly less ability to recall personal experiences up to six months following infection. This is known as episodic memories.

Their ability to retain attention was also less than that of uninfected people for up to nine month after their infection.

“What’s surprising about this is that our COVID-19 victims did not feel more symptomatic during testing, but they displayed degraded attention, memory, and attention,” Dr Sijia Zhu, Department of Experimental Psychology at University of Oxford.

“Our results show that individuals can suffer from some cognitive effects for several months.”

Researchers found that people with episodic memories and short attention spans tended to return to their normal levels after six or nine months.

In the analysis of 136 participants, participants also did well on tests that tested other cognitive abilities such as planning and working memory.

Stephen Burgess from the MRC Biostatistics Unit of the University of Cambridge noted the limited number of individuals involved in this study. He also stated that it wasn’t randomised.

He said that “despite this, there were significant differences in cognitive abilities between COVID and Non-COVID participants in the study, which included a number of specific measures.” 

“Despite limitations in non-randomised studies, it appears unlikely that these results can explain systematic differences among the groups not affected by COVID infections.”