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The neuro-psychological manifestations of COVID-19 in healthcareworkers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2024

A. Ghenim
Affiliation:
1Occupational Medicine Department, Farhat Hached Academic hospital
I. Kacem*
Affiliation:
1Occupational Medicine Department, Farhat Hached Academic hospital
A. Chouchane
Affiliation:
1Occupational Medicine Department, Farhat Hached Academic hospital
A. Aloui
Affiliation:
1Occupational Medicine Department, Farhat Hached Academic hospital
C. Sridi
Affiliation:
2Occupational Medicine Department
A. Fekih
Affiliation:
2Occupational Medicine Department
M. Hafsia
Affiliation:
2Occupational Medicine Department
M. Maoua
Affiliation:
1Occupational Medicine Department, Farhat Hached Academic hospital
M. Kahloul
Affiliation:
3Anesthesia and Intensive Care Department, Sahloul Academic hospital, sousse, Tunisia
N. Mrizak
Affiliation:
1Occupational Medicine Department, Farhat Hached Academic hospital
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

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Introduction

At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, respiratory expression of SARS-CoV-2 infection was the most worrying one. Later, other symptoms appeared to be more disturbing such as neurological and psychiatric manifestations, which may be due to direct or indirect effects of this virus on the central nervous system.

Objectives

To assess the prevalence of neuropsychological manifestations of covid-19 in healthcareworkers and to identify their risk factors.

Methods

This is a cross-sectional descriptive epidemiological study, carried out in the teaching hospitals of Farhat Hached and Sahloul of Sousse. All healthcareworkers, having tested positive for SARS-COV 2 during the period from 01/09/2020 to 28/02/2021 were enrolled. The collection of socio-professional and medical data was based on a pre-established synoptic form completed during an interview with the participants.

Results

A total of 953 COVID-19 patients were enrolled in this study. The mean age was 40.1 ± 10.5 years, with a sex ratio of 0.32. In our sample, 37.9% of patients had comorbidities such as psychiatric history (4.9%) and neurological history (2.4%). The prevalence of neuropsychological manifestations of covid-19 was 72.6%. The main neuropsychological manifestations were headache (50.3%), anosmia (40.7%), dysgeusia (29.9%), sleep disturbances (0.5%), dizziness (1, 2%) and paresthesia (0.3%).

Neuropsychological symptoms of long covid were dominated by memory impairment (10.7%), anosmia (8.5%), headache (7.3%), dizziness (3.4%) and sleep disturbances (3.1%).

The occurrence of neuropsychological manifestations was significantly associated with age (OR=1.6; p<10-3), male gender (OR= 0.57; p=0.03), smoking (OR=1.7; p=0.033), history of hypertension (OR=1.6; p=0.038), history of diabetes (OR=2.4; p<10-3) and hospitalization (OR=4.03 ; p<10-3).

Conclusions

The high prevalence of neuropsychological manifestations underlines the importance of studying their pathogenesis in order to better adapt their therapeutic protocols.

Disclosure of Interest

None Declared

Type
Abstract
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of European Psychiatric Association
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