Covid pandemic aged brains by an average of 5.5 months, study finds

Brain aging may have accelerated during the pandemic, even in people who have not fallen ill from Covid, suggests a new study.

According to the report published, British researchers determined that during the pandemic years of 2021 and 2022, people’s brains have shown signs of aging, including withdrawal, according to the report published in Nature Communications.

People infected with the virus have also shown deficits in certain cognitive capacities, such as treatment speed and mental flexibility.

The aging effect “was the most pronounced in men and those from more private socio-economic backgrounds,” said the first author of the study, Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad, researcher of neuroimagery at the University of Nottingham. “This emphasizes that brain health is not only shaped by illness, but also by broader life experiences.”

Overall, the researchers found an acceleration of 5.5 months in aging associated with the pandemic. On average, the difference in brain aging between men and women was small, about 2.5 months.

“We do not yet know exactly why, but that corresponds to other research suggesting that men can be more affected by certain types of stress or health challenges,” said Mohammadi-Nejad.

The brains decrease as people age. When gray matter shrinks prematurely, it can cause problems with memory or judgment loss, although the pandemic study does not show whether people with structural changes will eventually develop cognitive deficits.

The study was not designed to identify specific causes.

“But it is likely that the cumulative experience of the pandemic – in particular psychological stress, social isolation, disturbances of daily life, reduced activity and well -being – contributed to the changes observed,” said Mohammadi -Nejad. “In this sense, the pandemic period itself seems to have left a mark on our brain, even in the absence of infection.”

An earlier study on how the adolescent brains were affected by the pandemic discovered a similar result. The research in 2024 of the University of Washington revealed that the brain of the boys had aged the equivalent of an additional 1.4 years during the pandemic, while the girls were aging for an additional 4.2 years.

In the new study, Mohammadi-Nejad and his team turned to British biobank, a massive database launched in 2006, to determine if the pandemic had an impact on people’s brain. The database followed the anonymous health data of 500,000 volunteers which were recruited between 2006 and 2010, when the participants were between 40 and 69 years old. Until now, the biobank has collected 100,000 scans of the whole body.

To develop a normal aging model, to compare what could have occurred during the pandemic years, the researchers used imaging data of 15,334 healthy individuals who had been collected before the pandemic.

“We have used this large data set to teach our model what typical and healthy brain aging looks like the lifespan of adults,” said Mohammadi-Nejad.

Then, the researchers turned to a group of 996 participants who had two scans, the second taking place on average 2.3 years after the first. Among these participants, 564 had both scans before the pandemic, which helped artificial intelligence learn how the brain changes when there is no pandemic.

The other 432 had a second scan after the start of the pandemic, mainly between 2021 and 2022, allowing researchers to study how the pandemic could have affected brain aging.

Although these second scans were made later in the pandemic, “they reflect brain changes that probably took place at the height of the pandemic, when people have known the most disturbance,” said Mohammadi-Nejad.

Other research has suggested that the environmental factors could age the brain of a prematurely person. A study conducted in Antarctica has linked life in isolation relating to the narrowing of the brain.

“The most intriguing observation in this study is that only those infected with the SARS-COV-2 have shown cognitive deficits, despite structural aging,” said Jacqueline Becker, clinical neuropsychologist and assistant professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “It speaks a little about the effects of the virus itself.”

And it can possibly help explain syndromes, such as long and chronic fatigue, she said.

What we do not know about this study is whether the structural brain changes observed in people who have not been counted will be equivalent to changes observable in brain function, said Becker.

Adam Brickman, professor of neuropsychology at the Columbia University Vacelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, said that the study is a convincing story, but “always a hypothesis”.

This does not show if accelerated aging seen in people who are not covids will persist in the long term, said Brickman, who was not involved in the study.

If the brain was indeed modified by the pandemic significantly, then people could counter these changes by doing healthy things for the brain, he said.

“We know that the exercise is good for the brain and maintain blood pressure at a healthy level, for example. We know that sleep and social interactions are important. ”