Latest news with #AliRezaMohammadiNejad
Yahoo
a day ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Human Brains Rapidly Aged in The Pandemic, And It Wasn't Just The Virus
The devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic may have left a significant mark on our brains, even if we didn't get sick. Fatal cases of COVID-19 look scarily like old age in the brain, and now, new research suggests that the mental, social, and financial stresses of the pandemic may have aged our brains as well. A team led by researchers at the University of Nottingham trained an AI model to recognize healthy aging in the brain, using the data of more than 15,000 adults in the UK Biobank. The algorithm was then used to analyze the brain ages of two groups: one that had brain scans taken before the pandemic and another that had brain scans taken both before and during the pandemic. Related: During the pandemic, the average human brain aged five and a half months faster than it did before 2020. "What surprised me most was that even people who hadn't had COVID showed significant increases in brain aging rates," says neurologist Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad from Nottingham, who led the study. "It really shows how much the experience of the pandemic itself, everything from isolation to uncertainty, may have affected our brain health." The good news is that those changes may be reversible. The study only analyzed brain scans from two time points, which means that there may have been neurological recovery in the years that followed. "We can't yet test whether the changes we saw will reverse, but it's certainly possible, and that's an encouraging thought," says neurologist Dorothee Auer from Nottingham. What's more, just because a person's brain may have aged at a faster rate during the pandemic, doesn't mean their cognitive function was necessarily impacted. In fact, the only individuals in the study who showed decreased cognitive performance were those who were directly infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Still, the findings suggest that a major life event like a pandemic can have a significant impact on the brain, even if you don't get sick. In the first few years of the global pandemic, millions of humans died, and billions more dealt with a tidal wave of grief, loneliness, depression, anxiety, financial stress, and sleep disturbances. Initial research found teenagers were particularly affected by the global crisis, with the adolescent brain showing concerning signs of accelerated aging after 2020, similar to teens experiencing violence, neglect, or family dysfunction. The brains of young girls showed especially pronounced thinning in the cortex, which is a brain region primarily composed of gray matter. But the current study among adults found that male brains were more vulnerable to both grey and white matter changes. Signs of accelerated aging were also particularly evident among older people and among socially or economically disadvantaged groups. Previous studies have found that social isolation can change the structure of the brain, and poverty is also linked to accelerated brain aging. Both could be factors leading to structural changes in the brain, but it's important to remain cautious. Sweeping, long-term studies using brain scans can provide scientists with useful clues as to how major life events, like birth, parenthood, or menstruation, might be impacting our central nervous systems. But without closer research, it's impossible to say why these brain regions are changing, or what impact the changes might have on cognitive function, or our behavior. "This study reminds us that brain health is shaped not only by illness, but by our everyday environment," concludes Auer. "The pandemic put a strain on people's lives, especially those already facing disadvantage." The study was published in Nature Communications. Related News Eating Eggs Can Actually Lower Bad Cholesterol, New Study Says Vape Fluid Warps The Skulls of Fetal Mice, Study Shows Heart Cancer Strikes Very Rarely. An Expert Reveals Why.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Brains Aged Faster In 2021–2022: What Did The Pandemic Do To Us?
A new study suggests that the pandemic may have had a significant impact on our brains, whether or not we contracted COVID-19. Leveraging an extensive database of brain scans, British researchers say that people's brains showed accelerated aging during 2021 and 2022, including signs of shrinkage. While people who were infected with COVID also showed cognitive decline, like slower processing speed, the study was notable because it said even the non-infected were likely to experience harm to their brain. While the study did not delve into the exact causes of the accelerated aging, the study's first author, Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad, a neuroimaging researcher at the University of Nottingham, theorizes that it may have been the result of stress and other factors. 'But it is likely that the cumulative experience of the pandemic—including psychological stress, social isolation, disruptions in daily life, reduced activity and wellness—contributed to the observed changes… In this sense, the pandemic period itself appears to have left a mark on our brains, even in the absence of infection,' said Mohammadi-Nejad, per NBC. The researchers found that males and 'those from more socioeconomically deprived backgrounds' experienced the most significant brain aging. Overall, the pandemic was thought to be linked to a 5.5-month acceleration in the aging process. This is not the first time researchers have reached similar conclusions. Last year, a previous study found that teenagers experienced dramatic brain aging during the pandemic. Notably, the study suggested that girls' brains aged 4.2 years faster and boys' brains aged 1.3 years faster, on average. The latest study does not indicate whether the structural changes identified in individuals who have never contracted COVID will result in any noticeable changes in brain function. Nor does the study confirm whether the physical changes will persist over the long term, says Adam Brickman, a professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, who was not involved in the study.
Medscape
23-07-2025
- Health
- Medscape
COVID-19 Pandemic Tied to Accelerated Brain Aging
The COVID-19 pandemic may have accelerated brain aging, even among people who avoided becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2, new research suggested. By comparing longitudinal brain scans from healthy adults, researchers found that the average person's brain appeared to age by nearly 6 months for every year lived during the pandemic. 'What surprised me most was that even people who hadn't had COVID showed significant increases in brain aging rates,' lead author Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad, PhD, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, England, said in a statement. 'It really shows how much the experience of the pandemic itself, everything from isolation to uncertainty, may have affected our brain health,' Mohammadi-Nejad said. The study was published online on July 22 in Nature Communications . UK Biobank Data In addition to the well-documented respiratory and systemic manifestations of SARS-CoV-2 infection, compelling evidence has highlighted the ability of the virus to attack the central nervous system. Studies have shown high rates of fatigue, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and cognitive impairment in COVID-19 survivors. Research has also revealed potential associations between COVID-19, cognitive decline, brain changes, and the molecular signatures of brain aging. Mohammadi-Nejad and colleagues investigated the pandemic's impact on brain aging using longitudinal brain MRI data from 996 healthy adults participating in the UK Biobank study. Some participants had scans before and after the pandemic (the pandemic group); others, only before the pandemic (control group). They used advanced imaging and machine learning to estimate each person's 'brain age'— how old their brain appeared to be compared to their actual age. They used brain scans from 15,334 healthy individuals to develop a brain age model. Results showed that even with initially matched brain age gaps (predicted brain age vs chronological age) and matched for a range of health markers, the pandemic significantly accelerated brain aging. On average, the pandemic group showed a 5.5-month higher deviation of brain age gap at the second timepoint compared with the control group. In the pandemic group, increased brain age correlated with lower scores on standard cognitive tests, which might help explain why some people who had COVID-19 have shown impaired cognition, researchers said. Accelerated brain aging was more pronounced in males and those from deprived socio-demographic backgrounds and these deviations existed regardless of SARS-CoV-2 infection. 'Our findings provide valuable insight into how the COVID-19 pandemic affected brain health, demonstrating that the general pandemic effects alone, without infection, exerted a substantial detrimental effect on brain health, augmented by biosocial factors (age, health, and social inequalities) in a healthy middle-aged to older population,' the investigators note. 'Notably, the extent of accelerated brain aging over a matched pre-pandemic control group, observed in grey and white matter, was similar in both noninfected and infected sub-cohorts,' they noted. Interpret Cautiously In a statement from the UK nonprofit Science Media Center several experts weighed in on the results. 'While this is a very carefully conducted analysis, we have to be cautious with interpretation,' said Masud Husain, DPhil, BMBCh, FMedSci, professor of neurology & cognitive neuroscience, University of Oxford, Oxford, England. 'The brain age difference between the two groups (as indexed by brain scanning) was on average only 5 months, and difference in cognitive performance between groups was only on the total time taken to complete one of the tests. Is this really going to make a significant difference in everyday life?' Husain wondered. 'Furthermore, the time between scans was much shorter in the people scanned before and after the pandemic compared to those who had both scans before the pandemic. We therefore don't know if brain aging would have recovered if more time elapsed,' Husain said. Maxime Taquet, MBBCh, PhD, associate professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, said, 'It is important to note that the majority of people showed brain aging at the expected rate.' Nonetheless, Taquet said the findings raise 'important questions about the long-term neurological impact of the pandemic, whether due to infection itself or the broader psychological and social stress it caused.' Eugene Duff, PhD, Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London, England, cautioned that 'as an observational study it is not possible to fully exclude that factors unrelated to the pandemic could contribute to the observed acceleration. 'While the events of the pandemic were exceptional, this work demonstrates the stark effects that the conditions of an individual's life may have on brain and cognitive health, and the value of careful dissection of the myriad of local and global factors contributing to these conditions.'
Yahoo
23-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
COVID-19 Made Our Brains Age Faster
Credit - Yuichiro Chino—Getty Images COVID-19 is leaving all kinds of legacies on our health, both on our bodies and our brains. In a study published July 22 in Nature Communications, researchers report that living through the pandemic aged our brains—whether or not you were infected with COVID-19. To investigate COVID-19's impact on the brain, researchers looked at brain scans from 1,000 people during and before the pandemic. They compared these to brain scans from other people taken during "normal" times as a model for typical brain aging. Led by Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad from the University of Nottingham School of Medicine in the U.K., the researchers looked at measures like brain function, gray and white matter volume, a person's cognitive skills, and their chronological age. Gray matter is critical for memory, emotions, and movement, while white matter is essential for helping nerves transmit electrical signals. The pandemic-era brains aged about 5.5 months faster compared to the brains of those studied before the pandemic. The accelerated aging was documented in people who had COVID-19 infections as well as those who didn't, which strongly suggests that pandemic-related factors other than biological or virus-driven ones—like high stress—were also at work. In fact, the changes in gray and white matter were similar in people who were and were not infected. 'This finding was interesting and rather unexpected,' says Mohammadi-Nejad. Other studies have already shown that the COVID-19 virus can change the brain for the worse, but "we found that participants who simply lived through the pandemic period, regardless of infection, also showed signs of slightly accelerated brain aging. This highlights that the broader experience of the pandemic—including disruptions to daily life, stress, reduced social interactions, reduced activity, etc.,—may have had a measurable impact on brain health.' Read More: What to Know About the New COVID-19 Variant XFG The impact of the pandemic seemed to be greater in certain groups—notably men, the elderly, and people with more compromised health, lower educational status and income, or unstable housing. People with less stable employment had an average of five months of additional brain aging compared to those with higher employment status, while poorer health added about four months of increased brain age compared to better health. However, only people infected with COVID-19 showed drops in cognitive skills. But the fact that those who weren't infected during the pandemic also showed accelerated aging reflects the need to acknowledge the broader health effects of the pandemic beyond the obvious physical metrics on which doctors tend to focus. 'Brain health can be influenced by everyday life activities, and major societal disruptions—like those experienced during the pandemic—can leave a mark even in healthy individuals,' Mohammadi-Nejad says. 'This adds to our understanding of public health by reinforcing the importance of considering mental, cognitive, and social well-being alongside traditional physical health indicators during future crisis-response planning.' While the study did not explore specific ways to address brain aging, he says that strategies known to maintain brain health, such as a healthy diet, exercise, adequate sleep, and social and cognitive interactions are important, especially in the context of stressful circumstances such as a pandemic. 'Whether these can reverse the specific changes we observed remains to be studied,' he says. Contact us at letters@ Solve the daily Crossword
Times
22-07-2025
- Health
- Times
Covid was bad for our brains (even for those who didn't catch it)
The Covid-19 pandemic was 'detrimental' to brain health, even for those who never contracted the virus, a study has suggested. Academics say that the strain of the pandemic on people's lives may have aged our brains prematurely. The team, from the University of Nottingham, found that brain ageing during the pandemic was 'more pronounced' among men, older people and those from deprived backgrounds. • Is your holiday making you ill? 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 team trained a brain-ageing model on more than 15,000 healthy people, then applied the model to 1,000 people taking part in the UK Biobank study, a long-term piece of research tracking the health of British adults. Half of this group were assessed before the global pandemic, and half were assessed before and after. The research, published in Nature Communications, found that those who had lived through the crisis had a '5.5 month higher deviation of brain age gap' compared with the people who were only assessed before the pandemic. 'We found that the Covid-19 pandemic was detrimental to brain health and induced accelerated brain ageing … regardless of Sars-CoV-2 infection,' the experts said. The team also assessed cognitive performance by looking at tests taken at the time of the scans. Those infected with the virus were found to perform worse on cognitive tests when they were assessed before and after the pandemic. • Optimists all on same wavelength, but no two pessimists are alike Professor Dorothee Auer, a senior author of the study, added: '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.' Professor Masud Husain, from the University of Oxford and who is not affiliated with the research, urged 'caution' when interpreting the results. He said: 'The brain age difference between the two groups (as indexed by brain scanning) was on average only five months, and difference in cognitive performance between groups was only on the total time taken to complete one of the tests. 'Is this really going to make a significant difference in everyday life? The time between scans was much shorter in the people scanned before and after the pandemic, compared to those who had both scans before the pandemic. We therefore don't know if brain ageing would have recovered if more time elapsed.' Previous research has found that people who had Covid performed less well in cognitive tests, especially executive function. Scientists from Imperial College London found that those who had had Covid scored about three IQ points lower than those who had not been infected. Those who had been in intensive care scored nine points lower, and those who suffer from long Covid scored about six points lower than uninfected individuals.
