“This kind of injury is well known to produce symptoms like lack of motivation and motor slowing, and may contribute to memory difficulties in other neurological conditions. Our results suggest a similar process is occurring in long COVID.”<\/p>\n
Previous studies among people with long COVID mainly focused on brain inflammation and immune changes, but none directly examined whether the brain’s dopamine-producing neurons were affected.<\/p>\n “These results indicate that long COVID is, at least in part, a disorder of the brain’s dopamine system,” argues<\/a> Meyer.<\/p>\n Dopamine is famously known as the ‘feel-good’ hormone. It’s a crucial chemical messenger in the brain, closely tied to the brain’s reward system.<\/p>\n But there are reasons to suspect that dopamine circuits may be vulnerable to injury during long COVID.<\/p>\n Individuals with long COVID show elevated markers for some brain cells that prune back synapses. This may damage dopamine-releasing neurons.<\/p>\n It’s also possible that SARS-CoV-2<\/a> can directly infect dopamine-releasing neurons, injuring them from within.<\/p>\n These brain cells tend to have a high density of receptors that SARS-CoV-2 could theoretically connect to.<\/p>\n Using PET scans (positron emission tomography) with a radioactive tracer, researchers in Canada measured a marker of dopamine nerve endings among 24 participants with long COVID.<\/p>\n None of these participants had an active infection, but they were all suffering from persistent and debilitating symptoms since first falling ill with COVID. To a certain extent, they all reported a lack of motivation, and as a group, they scored worse on tests of memory and movement speed.<\/p>\n Compared to healthy controls, their brains showed a reduction in the density of dopamine nerve endings within several regions of the striatum.<\/p>\n This part of the brain is involved in motivation, movement speed, and memory.<\/p>\n The severity of some long COVID symptoms among patients was correlated with their density of dopamine neurons.<\/p>\n This suggests that the two are connected.<\/p>\n Roughly 25 percent of the variance in these symptoms among patients with long COVID was associated with a loss of dopaminergic neurons.<\/p>\n “The present study makes a case for a hypothesis that interventions targeting dopamine-releasing neurons in long COVID would have therapeutic impact,” the authors conclude<\/a>.<\/p>\n “This is a notable shift from present therapeutic development, given that no current trials focus on augmenting functions of dopamine-releasing neurons.”<\/p>\n Brain scans like these measure a protein found on dopamine nerve endings rather than measuring neuron density directly.<\/p>\n However, they are very useful when investigating brain changes in living patients.<\/p>\n The only way to directly examine dopamine-releasing neurons is to examine postmortem brain tissue.<\/p>\n One small autopsy study<\/a> found fewer dopamine neurons in people who died with severe COVID-19, but most were elderly, and some had signs of early dementia, including one person with Parkinson’s<\/a>, which confounds the results. <\/p>\n This new investigation is only preliminary, but it suggests that perhaps long COVID impacts dopamine-releasing neurons in broadly similar ways to Parkinson’s.<\/p>\n If that is verified, then drugs like L-dopa, which are used for Parkinson’s, could theoretically be repurposed to treat patients with long COVID.<\/p>\n “These interventions would enhance tonic dopamine release broadly, and phasic release in intact synapses, thereby reducing impact of lost synapses,” the study authors theorize<\/a>.<\/p>\n Still, these drugs aren’t to be taken lightly, as they can have significant side effects.<\/p>\n They may also only work for patients with a certain type of long COVID. The symptoms of this post-viral condition are very diverse, and not all patients report slower physical movements, a lack of motivation, or worsening memory.<\/p>\n It’s possible that other manifestations of long COVID don’t involve dopamine neurons in the same way.<\/p>\n The researchers argue<\/a> for future studies in larger, similarly well-controlled cohorts to help confirm the robustness and generalizability of these findings. It’s worth noting Meyer has a pending patent application for a dopamine-based long COVID treatment.<\/p>\n Susan Deuville is a patient with long COVID who participates as a lived-experience research advisor to Meyer.<\/p>\n “For five years I have been seeking answers on what happened to me after I contracted COVID in 2021,” says<\/a> Deuville.<\/p>\n “It was a crushing loss of the life I had and the person I was before. The research of Dr Meyer brings hope. It also validates what long COVID sufferers have always known \u2013 long COVID is real, and the effects are devastating.”<\/p>\n The research has been published in eBioMedicine<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article was fact-checked by Rebecca Dyer<\/a> and edited by Rebecca Dyer<\/a>. While we pride ourselves on our process, we are only human. If you spot a mistake, please let us know<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have discovered a distinct change in the brains of people with long COVID that might explain some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[134,1021,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-620250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-msft-content","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Brain](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/StriatumChanges-1190x675.jpg\")
PET scans show a weaker signal for a marker of dopamine-releasing nerve endings in a person with long COVID (left), compared with healthy people without and with a history of COVID-19<\/a> (center and right). (Liu et al., eBioMedicine, 2026)<\/p>\n![\"Brain](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/gr2.webp\")
In people with long COVID, a lower PET scan signal for a dopamine neuron marker was associated with more apathy and cognitive concerns, poorer memory, and slower performance on movement and reading tests. (Liu et al., eBioMedicine, 2026)<\/p>\n