Pandemic aged our brains – even those who never caught Covid, study finds

Academics suggest that the strain on people’s lives from isolation and uncertainty has impacted our health

The Covid-19 pandemic was "detrimental" to brain health, even among individuals who were never infected, a new study suggests.

Academics propose that the immense strain placed on people’s lives – from weeks of isolation to the pervasive uncertainty surrounding the crisis – may have aged the brains of the nation.

The research indicated that this brain ageing was "more pronounced" among men, older individuals, and those from deprived backgrounds.

The findings emerged from brain ageing models initially trained using data from over 15,000 healthy people.

These models were then applied to nearly 1,000 participants in the UK Biobank study, a long-running project monitoring the health of middle-aged and older adults.

Researchers analysed brain scans, with half of the cohort having undergone scans prior to the pandemic, and the remainder having scans both before and after the global health crisis.

After reviewing the imaging data, the academics concluded that the pandemic "significantly" accelerated brain ageing.

Researchers found that people who were infected with the virus appeared to perform more poorly on cognitive tests when they were assessed again after the pandemic (PA)

This was assessed by their brain age, as determined by the scans, compared with their actual age.

The research team found that, on average, the scans taken after people had lived through the crisis had a “5.5-month higher deviation of brain age gap”.

“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 from the University of Nottingham wrote in the journal Nature Communications.

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-19 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 appeared to perform more poorly on cognitive tests when they were assessed again after the pandemic.

Professor Dorothee Auer, professor of neuroimaging and senior author on 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.”