Healthy Young People Barely Sick With Covid-19 Are Dying From Strokes

Reports of strokes in the young and middle-aged -are the latest twist in the ever-evolving understanding of the mysteries surrounding COVID-19.

Even as the virus has infected nearly 2.8 million people worldwide and killed nearly 200,000 as of Friday,  the inner workings of the virus continue to elude top scientific minds.

According to the Washington Post, the virus was once thought to be a pathogen that primarily attacks the lungs,  but has turned out to be a much more deadly as it can affect nearly every major organ system in the body.

One medical report out of Wuhan, China, showed that some hospitalized patients had experienced strokes, but many of those cases were seriously ill and elderly patients.

Any linkage was considered more of “a clinical hunch by a lot of really smart people,” said Sherry H-Y Chou, a University of Pittsburgh neurologist and critical care doctor.

Now three large U.S. medical centers are preparing to publish specific data on the stroke phenomenon for the first time. Their numbers are small, only a few dozen per each location, but they provide new insights into what the virus does as it attacks our bodies.

A Stroke is a sudden interruption in the blood supply and is a complex problem with numerous causes and presentations. They can be caused by heart problems, clogged arteries due to cholesterol, even substance abuse.

Mini-strokes often don’t cause any serious or permanent damage and can resolve on their own within 24 hours, while bigger ones can have catastrophic effects.

The recent analyses suggest coronavirus patients are mostly experiencing the deadliest type of stroke- LVOs- also known as large vessel occlusions. This type occurs in the main blood-supplying arteries, which can obliterate large parts of the brain responsible for movement, speech, and decision-making in one blow.

Many researchers now suspect strokes in novel coronavirus patients may be a direct consequence of blood problems that are producing clots all over some patient’s bodies.

A critical care doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Robert Stevens, called stroke “one of the most dramatic manifestations” of the blood clotting issues. “We’ve also taken care of patients in their 30s with stroke and COVID, and this was extremely surprising,” he said.

Sherry Chou said one question is whether the clotting is due to a direct attack on the blood vessels or a “friendly fire problem” caused by the patient’s automatic immune response.

“In your body’s attempt to fight off the virus, does the immune response end up hurting your brain?” she asked. Chou is hoping to find answers to such questions through a review of stroke and other neurological complication in COVID-19 patients treated at 68 medical centers among 17 countries.