{"id":11539,"date":"2026-02-25T18:07:55","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T00:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11539"},"modified":"2026-02-25T18:07:57","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T00:07:57","slug":"how-covid-quietly-rewires-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/02\/25\/how-covid-quietly-rewires-the-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"How Covid Quietly Rewires the Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/features\/2026-02-25\/how-long-do-covid-s-effects-last-brain-issues-are-still-being-found\">Bloomberg<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Researchers keep discovering more about the long-term neurological effects of SARS-CoV-2. Doctors call it&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S259014272030001X\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Ondine\u2019s curse, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ondine\u2019s curse<\/a>\u2014a catastrophic failure of the brain stem in which breathing no longer happens automatically, especially during sleep. It\u2019s extremely rare, typically seen only in infants with genetic mutations or adults after severe trauma, and for a long time it wasn\u2019t something doctors associated with viral infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in the spring of 2020,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/irp.nih.gov\/pi\/avindra-nath\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Avindra Nath, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Avindra Nath<\/a>, clinical director of the\u00a0National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, one of the\u00a0National Institutes of Health, was helping investigate a handful of unexplained\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMc2033369\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"deaths, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">deaths<\/a>\u00a0in New York City. The victims had stopped breathing and died suddenly at home, with no lung or heart damage that might have suggested the underlying cause. The remains were sent for further examination to Maryland, where SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, was discovered in lung tissue. But that didn\u2019t explain why the victims had stopped breathing. With no abnormalities evident in each victim\u2019s brain, Nath was asked to take a closer look. After his team examined the brains using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging and microscopes, the problem came into focus: Tissue in regions of the brain stem that control breathing had lost neurons. The finding unsettled Nath enough that he began\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/worldneurologyonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/WFN_AJ_2020_0515.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"warning, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">warning<\/a>\u00a0colleagues Covid might not only be damaging the lungs\u2014it might be disrupting the brain\u2019s control of breathing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/features\/2026-02-25\/how-long-do-covid-s-effects-last-brain-issues-are-still-being-found\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bloomberg Researchers keep discovering more about the long-term neurological effects of SARS-CoV-2. Doctors call it&nbsp;Ondine\u2019s curse\u2014a catastrophic failure of the brain stem in which breathing no longer happens automatically, especially during sleep. It\u2019s extremely rare, typically seen only in infants with genetic mutations or adults after severe trauma, and for a long time it wasn\u2019t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11540,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11539\/revisions\/11540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}