Coronavirus and its Effects on the Nervous System: A Review Article

Coronavirus can affect different parts of the body. So that different parts of the nervous system including brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid are involved during this disease and various neurological manifestations appear. The purpose of this review study is to investigate the effects of coronavirus on the nervous system.

Methods and Materials:

 In this review, PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, SID, and Magiran databases were used to search for nervous system, Coronavirus, and Covid-19 keywords and their English equivalents from the years of 2019 to 2023. 135 articles were extracted and 19 articles were included in the study.

The findings indicate that the coronavirus can cause a range of neurological changes and complications by invading the human nervous system, including impaired consciousness, anxiety, depression, acute cerebrovascular events, stroke, and viral encephalitis. Taste and smell disorders and anosmia (due to olfactory epithelial damage by the respective virus) are among the most common sudden neurological symptoms of Covid-19, which are related to the involvement of the peripheral nervous system. There have also been reports of a possible relationship between coronaviruses and MS.

The available data indicate that a wide range of neurological complications reported in connection with Covid-19 are caused by the direct effects of the virus on the nervous system; however, these effects have not been fully determined yet and there is a need for more extensive research. Furthermore, measures should be taken to solve the challenges in order to better identify this virus, so that neurological pathology symptoms can be detected earlier and therapeutic intervention can be performed before irreversible damage.