Is it time to add schizophrenia to the list of unusual ‘long COVID’ symptoms?

While many cases of COVID-19 – particularly among those who have been vaccinated – are mild, the potential of the virus to incapacitate or impair its victims cannot be underestimated. For one, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, can cause literal brain damage. In addition to all other organs that can be affected by COVID, such as the lungs, heart and kidneys, the virus has found a way to lodge itself in the skull. And the more we learn about this relationship, the more worrying it becomes.

A new study published in the journal Psychiatry Research suggests that severe cases of COVID are associated with an 11 percent increased risk of schizophrenia, with the authors suggesting that schizophrenia should likely be added to the growing constellation of symptoms , known as long COVID.

The good news is that this trend only seems to apply to people with severe cases, so mere infection doesn’t increase this risk, only hospitalization does. It’s also not clear if COVID is directly causing this surge. But it adds to a growing body of research linking COVID infection to serious mental health deficits.

To find this link, an international trio of researchers analyzed two public genetic databases, one for pure COVID infections (122,000 cases) and another for infections that required hospitalization (32,000 cases) and a total of 4.5 million controls. To better understand the cause-and-effect relationship, they applied a method called Mendelian randomization, a study design used since the early 1990s and based on principles developed by Gregor Mendel, known as the father of modern genetics is.

The researchers used a few different models to ensure their results were accurate.

“While viral infection may not increase risk of schizophrenia, hospitalization for COVID-19 was associated with an 11% increase in schizophrenia risk,” they reported.

While an 11 percent increase may not seem like a lot, it’s a big deal given how debilitating schizophrenia can be. This mental disorder is often misunderstood and stigmatized, even by mental health professionals, thanks to misrepresentations in film and television.

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon’s weekly newsletter, The Vulgar Scientist.

The National Institute of Mental Health defines schizophrenia as experiencing a “distorted” reality punctuated by disordered thoughts, hallucinations, and delusions. But it doesn’t make people more violent or more prone to breaking the law. In fact, “people with schizophrenia are more likely to be harmed by others than people without the disease,” according to NIMH.

Since the pandemic began, patients with schizophrenia have been reported to be more likely to die from COVID, with a 2021 study by New Yorkers finding that schizophrenia patients are almost three times more likely to die, second only to age as a risk factor for mortality. These tracks of data available since the 1980s show that people with schizophrenia are more prone to premature death.

Mental health disorders have seen a steep rise since the pandemic began, with increases in depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, insomnia and more. Finding a link between COVID hospitalization and schizophrenia proves how serious this disease can be.

However, the researchers note several limitations to their research, including the use of genetic datasets from people of exclusively European ancestry. They were also unable to account for the environmental variables “that are critical to both schizophrenia and COVID-19,” the authors report. But, as mentioned, they tried to control this by using different models.

They conclude that schizophrenia should be studied as one of the possible symptoms of long COVID, a condition characterized by long-term health problems lasting months or even years. Many people with long COVID report “brain fog” or cognitive dysfunction, as well as extreme fatigue, headaches, palpitations, joint pain, and blood disorders. A recent study from Scotland compared 33,000 people who had contracted COVID to 62,000 who had never been infected and found that 1 in 20 people had still not recovered between six and 18 months after infection. Another 42 percent only partially recovered.

It may seem like COVID is associated with so many diseases that it begs the question: which health problem? tilt do you link to the virus? But the reason COVID seems so overwhelming and widespread is because SARS-2 is so good at infecting so many different parts of the body. This is because the receptor that SARS-2 uses to enter cells – called the ACE2 receptor – is present throughout our body, giving the virus many different avenues of attack. This manifests itself in several types of diseases.

Schizophrenia is still an undertreated condition that increases the risk of death and serious illness. A recent study in Molecular Psychiatry examined non-COVID-related hospital admissions in France and found that “patients with schizophrenia for multiple somatic conditions (especially cancer, circulatory and digestive diseases, and stroke) were admitted less frequently.”

It seems that COVID is no exception and more attention should be paid to this relationship.