Covid aged our brains by six months, study finds

Telegraph

23-07-2025

The Covid pandemic sped up the ageing process of people's brains and was detrimental to the function of the mind, a study has found.
People infected with the virus were most affected, figures showed, but even those who avoided infection saw an impact.
Scientists compared scans of people's brains around three years apart, using computer models to determine how much the brains had aged. A control group of people with two scans done pre-pandemic was compared to people who had one scan before, and then a follow-up after the virus emerged.
The researchers, from the University of Nottingham, used UK Biobank scans from almost 1,000 people and found the pandemic group's brains had an average 5.5 months more than the control group.
Academics suggested the strain on people's lives from lockdowns, with their isolation and uncertainty, may have aged people's brains.
They found brain ageing during the pandemic was 'more pronounced' among men, older people and those from deprived
The scientists discovered that for all people, irrespective of age, brains aged almost six months more than they should have done during the pandemic.
Pandemic's strain on lives
They also looked at the impact of the pandemic on the grey and white matter of the brain to see how a person was impacted based on their age.
Grey matter is a type of tissue that is crucial for processing information, while white matter is a deeper tissue that allows different parts of the brain to communicate with each other.
The white and grey matter of those who lived through the pandemic was, on average, three-and-a-half days older per year than that of the control group. The impact was more severe in people who contracted the virus, with an extra six days of ageing per year compared with the non-pandemic group.
'We found that the Covid-19 pandemic was detrimental to brain health and induced accelerated brain ageing … regardless of SARS-CoV-2 infection,' the University of Nottingham experts wrote in the paper.
Dr Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad, who led the study, said: 'What surprised me most was that even people who hadn't had Covid showed significant increases in brain ageing rates. It really shows how much the experience of the pandemic itself, everything from isolation to uncertainty, may have affected our brain health.'
The research team also examined whether having Covid affected someone's cognitive performance by examining the results of tests taken at the time of the scans. They found that people who were infected with the virus showed a lower performance on cognitive tests when they were assessed again after the pandemic.
Prof Dorothee Auer, who specialises in neuroimaging and was a senior author on the study, said: 'This study reminds us that brain health is shaped not only by illness, but by our everyday environment. The pandemic put a strain on people's lives, especially those already facing disadvantage.
'We can't yet test whether the changes we saw will reverse – but it's certainly possible, and that's an encouraging thought.'