Significant Association Between COVID-19 Infection and Cerebral Microbleeds Found in New Study

According to study results published in Brain Communications, COVID-19 infection was associated with a significantly greater likelihood of cerebral microbleeds (CMBs) on medically indicated brain MRI. Incidental findings of CMBs have been discovered on brain MRI in COVID-19 cohorts of critically ill patients. These results indicate a possible association between COVID-19 infection and CMBs.

The retrospective case-control study included 73 COVID-19 positive individuals aged ≥18 years, and 219 matched non-exposed controls (based on age, sex, body mass index, and comorbidities) consisting of individuals who had an MRI in 2019 (ie, before the COVID-19 pandemic). COVID-19 exposure was defined as having a positive real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test performed in a hospital either before or up to 3 days after the MRI. All participants underwent MRI with susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) and researchers used artificial intelligence (AI) to detect the presence and number of CMBs. The AI method used a 3D deep learning framework that was trained and evaluated on 3879 scans with a total of 38,456 CMBs.

• COVID-19 infection was associated with significantly greater odds of having CMBs on MRI (odds ratio [OR] 2.66; 95% CI, 1.23–5.76). 
• > 5 microbleeds were found in 12% of individuals infected with COVID-19 vs 5% of controls. 
• The association between COVID-19 infection and CMBs was even stronger when individuals with dementia and those who were hospitalized were excluded from the analysis.