Parkinson’s disease following COVID-19: causal link or chance occurrence?

Abstract

There was no evidence of brain COVID-19 infection (from spinal tap) nor were the MRI brain scans abnormal, although positron emission tomography (PET) scan and dopamine transporter (DaT) scan did reveal asymmetric findings in all 3 cases. [2] in their report did not specifically state if a thorough neurological examination has excluded signs of parkinsonism at the time of admission for COVID-19 infection. Since viral parkinsonism is far less common than PD [5], it is possible that these reported patients may already have preexisting PD but the symptoms/signs were unmasked by the acute viral infection. [...]there was no neuroimaging evidence of inflammation or structural damage in basal ganglia or olfactory tract, nor evidence of COVID-19 infection in the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF). Rights and permissions Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.