{"id":189024,"date":"2022-08-17T15:47:51","date_gmt":"2022-08-17T19:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=189024"},"modified":"2022-08-17T15:47:51","modified_gmt":"2022-08-17T19:47:51","slug":"covid-stroke-link-goes-back-to-2020-uconn-health-biopsy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2022\/08\/covid-stroke-link-goes-back-to-2020-uconn-health-biopsy\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-Stroke Link Goes Back to 2020 UConn Health Biopsy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It may not be on everyone\u2019s radar that COVID can cause a vasculitis in the brain, which also can cause strokes. — Dr. Gracia Mui<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While the theory of a connection between severe COVID-19 and stroke risk goes back to 2020, what may be lesser known is UConn Health\u2019s role in establishing that connection.<\/p>\n

A patient encounter during one of the pandemic\u2019s early waves yielded some of the first evidence in the world that would provide validation of what the medical community was beginning to suspect, as UConn Health researchers describe in a commentary recently published in the journal Operative Neurosurgery<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.
Dr. Gracia Mui is co-director of UConn Health’s Stroke Center. (Photo by Tina Encarnacion)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe have a brain biopsy from someone proving that COVID can affect the blood vessels in the brain, which could lead to strokes,\u201d says Dr. Gracia Mui<\/a>, co-director of the UConn Health Stroke Center<\/a> and the commentary\u2019s co-author.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long for doctors and nurses to notice blood clots in people hospitalized with severe COVID-19.<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially when we were putting lines in, we noticed that they would clot very easily,\u201d Mui says. \u201cThey were also having incidental strokes. A lot of times as they were coming off the ventilators we\u2019d notice that they had a small stroke or a big stroke.\u201d<\/p>\n

COVID-19 has been found to make people hypercoagulable, or more at risk of having blood clots. A majority of strokes are ischemic strokes, caused by blocked blood vessels to the brain.<\/p>\n

But another, less-apparent path from COVID-19 to stroke is vasculitis, or inflammation of the blood vessels, in the central nervous system. The pathology of a tissue biopsy from one of those early cases at UConn Health provided scientific evidence of that association.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.
Dr. Qian Wu is a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and the chief of anatomic pathology and autopsy service at UConn Health. (Tina Encarnacion\/UConn Health photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In their commentary, Mui and co-authors Shriya Gupta (Department of Neurology), Dr. Erica Becker (Department of Internal Medicine), Aziz Khan (Department of Internal Medicine), Dr. Ketan Bulsara (Division of Neurosurgery chief), and Dr. Qian Wu (Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine) refer to the case of a woman in her 50s who had suffered a stroke and was brought to the emergency department. She had had COVID-19, was symptomatic, and had several comorbidities. Investigation through imaging and a brain biopsy revealed several irregularities consistent with vasculitis. Her neurological symptoms showed improvement over the course of several weeks of treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may not be on everyone\u2019s radar that COVID can cause a vasculitis in the brain, which also can cause strokes,\u201d Mui says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe passage of time continues to reveal novel manifestations of SARS-CoV-2,\u201d the authors conclude. \u201cIn many ways, we may only be seeing the beginning of some of the [central nervous system] manifestations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The message remains to watch for signs of stroke in those who have severe COVID-19, even those who are younger and otherwise don\u2019t fit the traditional profile for stroke risk (such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes, or obesity). Experts recommend using the acronym BE FAST to help recognize stroke\u2019s warning signs:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • B \u2013 BALANCE:<\/strong> Watch for sudden loss of balance<\/li>\n
  • E \u2013 EYES<\/strong>: Check for vision loss<\/li>\n
  • F \u2013 FACE:<\/strong> Does one side of the face droop or is it numb? Ask the person to smile. Is the person\u2019s smile uneven?<\/li>\n
  • A \u2013 ARM:<\/strong> Is one arm weak or numb? Ask the person to raise both arms. Does one arm drift downward?<\/li>\n
  • S \u2013 SPEECH:<\/strong> Is speech slurred? Is the person unable to speak or hard to understand? Ask the person to repeat a simple sentence, like \u201cThe sky is blue.\u201d Is the sentence repeated correctly?<\/li>\n
  • T \u2013 TIME<\/strong>: If someone shows any of these symptoms, even if the symptoms go away, call 9-1-1 and get the person to the hospital immediately. Check the time so you\u2019ll know when the first symptoms appeared.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    The current consensus is the elevated stroke risk subsides a month after COVID-19 infection. It\u2019s not known yet whether a subsequent infection with a different variant resets that risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It is widely accepted that COVID-19 can increase the risk of stroke, even in those who otherwise normally would not be in a higher-risk group. One of the first pieces of scientific evidence of that association comes from a UConn Health case, explained in the journal “Operative Neurosurgery.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":185341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1969,2231,2288,2289,2076,1868,2235,179],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2010],"class_list":["post-189024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cardiology","category-health-well-being","category-neurology","category-neurosurgery","category-research","category-meds","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-health"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 15:24:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189024"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":189033,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189024\/revisions\/189033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/185341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189024"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=189024"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=189024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}