THURSDAY, April 2, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The woman worked in the airlines industry and was in her late 50s. She arrived at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit with a cough, fever and mental confusion that had arisen over the prior three days.
A nasal swab test showed she was infected with the new coronavirus. And as doctors tried to track down the cause of her "altered mental status," brain scans revealed an encephalopathy -- swelling in some areas of the brain -- as well as small areas of brain cell death.
It's a condition that's relatively rare in adults and potentially deadly, according to a team led by Henry Ford radiologist Dr. Brent Griffith.
"While [COVID-19] patients typically present with fever, shortness of breath and cough, neurologic manifestations have been reported, although to a much lesser extent," the woman's doctors wrote in the April 2 issue of the journal Radiology.
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Their diagnosis: "COVID-19-associated acute necrotizing hemorrhagic encephalopathy, a rare encephalopathy that has been associated with other viral infections."
It's believed the brain can be damaged by viral infection whenever a patient's immune system overreacts to the virus. This immune system hyperactivity triggers a "cytokine storm" -- an overproduction of immune cells and their activating compounds, known as cytokines.
