Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and neurological manifestations in SARS-CoV-2 patients

S.A. Meo, A.A. Abukhalaf, A.A. Alomar, F. Al-Hussain

Department of Physiology, Medicine-Neurology Division, College of Medicine, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. smeo@ksu.edu.sa

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• Infectious Diseases

OBJECTIVE: The “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)” disease caused a challenging and threating pandemic (COVID-19) worldwide with a great loss to life and the global economy. SARS-CoV-2 mainly involves the respiratory system, however, with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), neurological and special senses clinical manifestations have been reported rarely. The present study aims to investigate the MRI findings, clinical manifestations of neurological and special senses involvement in SARS-CoV-2 patients.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study, 284 articles from the databases “Pub-Med, Web of Science-Clarivate Analytics, Embase and Google Scholar” were identified. The keywords, coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 pandemic, MRI, brain, special senses, neurological involvement were entered into the search engines and the concerned documents were selected and reviewed. The descriptive information was recorded from the particular studies; finally, we included 48 publications.

RESULTS: The common neurological manifestations in SARS-CoV-2 patients were headache, impaired consciousness, acute cerebrovascular disease, ataxia, tremors, meningitis, encephalitis, cerebral bleeding, subarachnoid hemorrhage, frontal lobe, temporal lobe and intracerebral hematoma, hemiparesis and seizures. However, common special senses manifestations in SARS-CoV-2 patients were olfactory, auditory and gustatory disorders including red eyes, painless monocular visual disturbance, anosmia, ageusia, dysgeusia, dysosmia and hypoacusis. Moreover, the MRI findings identified in SARS-CoV-2 patients were isolated oval-shaped lesion in the corpus callosum, bilateral basal ganglia hemorrhage, ischemic lesions involving the corpus callosum, basal ganglia, cerebellum and vasogenic edema extending to the cerebral peduncles, pons and ventricles.

CONCLUSIONS: The neurologic manifestations of SARS-CoV-2 patients are highly variable. The SARS-COV-2 exerts its damaging effects on the nervous system and special senses by developing determinant numerous neurological and special senses’ clinical manifestations. Physicians with the help of MRI must rule out the neurological and special senses manifestations among SARS-CoV-2 patients.

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