Covid-19 patients are no more likely to need epilepsy care in future than those who have flu, according to a study from Yale University.
The study compared patients who were hopsitalised with Covid-19 to patients who were admitted with influenza (flu), focusing on six neurological diagnoses: epilepsy, migraine, stroke, neuropathy, movement disorders and dementia.
It was published in the March 20, 2024, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
It found Covid-19 patients was less likely to need care for all the listed neurological conditions in future when compared to flu patients.
It added that Covid-19 infection was also associated with a lower risk of a neurological diagnosis in the year after infection.
The results showed a diagnosis rate of 2.79% in the Covid-19 group and 4.91% in the flu group.
The study looked at 77,272 people with Covid-19 and 77,272 people with flu. The data came from TriNetX, a global health research network.
The data from the Covid group followed the period from April 1, 2020, until November 15, 2021, and from the flu group it came from 2016 to 2019.
About 57% of the patients were female and about 42% were white.
The Yale research team compromised Adam de Havenon, Brian C. Callaghan, Yunshan Xu, Maria Connor, Chloe E. Hill, John Ney and Gregory J. Esper.
Callaghan, chair of the American Academy of Neurology’s Health Services Research Subcommittee, said: “While the results were not what we expected to find, they are reassuring in that we found being hospitalised with Covid did not lead to more care for common neurological conditions when compared to being hospitalised with influenza.”
A recent study from Swansea University, which Epilepsy Action supported, found that people with epilepsy had a higher risk of being hospitalised with Covid and of dying from Covid, compared to those who did not have epilepsy.
This research was based on anonymised health data for the Welsh population. Read more here: www.epilepsy.org.uk/swansea-university-study-shows-impact-of-covid-and-epilepsy
