Co-ultraPEALut in Subjective Cognitive Impairment Following SARS-CoV-2 Infection: An Exploratory Retrospective Study

Abstract

Neurological involvement following coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) is thought to have a neuroinflammatory etiology. Co-ultraPEALut (an anti-inflammatory molecule) and luteolin (an anti-oxidant) have shown promising results as neuroinflammation antagonists. The aim of this study was to describe cognitive impairment in patients with post-COVID-19 treated with co-ultraPEALut. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), the Prospective–Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ), the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS), and a subjective assessment were administered at baseline and after 10 months. Patients treated with co-ultraPEALut were retrospectively compared with controls. Twenty-six patients treated with co-ultraPEALut showed a significant improvement in PRMQ (T0: 51.94 ± 10.55, T1: 39.67 ± 13.02, p < 0.00001) and MoCA raw score (T0: 25.76 ± 2.3, T1: 27.2 ± 2, p 0.0260); the MoCA-adjusted score and the FSS questionnaires also showed an improvement, even though it was not statistically significant; and 80.77% of patients reported a subjective improvement. In the control subjects (n = 15), the improvement was not as pronounced (PRMQ T0: 45.77 ± 13.47, T1: 42.33 ± 16.86, p 0.2051; FSS T0: 4.95 ± 1.57, T1: 4.06 ± 1.47, p 0.1352). Patients treated with co-ultraPEALut and corticosteroids were not statistically different from those treated with co-ultraPEALut alone. Neuro-post-COVID-19 patients treated with co-ultraPEALut scored better than controls in MoCA and PRMQ questionnaires after 10 months: this may support the importance of neuroinflammation modulation for neuro-long-COVID-19.

Intervention modalities for brain fog caused by long-COVID: systematic review of the literature

“…These studies provided information on possible interventions to treat neurocognitive deficits or long-COVID. Subsequently, the full texts of these articles were evaluated following the inclusion and exclusion criteria that were issued above; after quality assessment, 17 studies were included in this review [ 14 – 30 ]. Figure 2 shows the flow diagram detailing the review process and study selection based on the PRISMA flow chart.…”

“…Two pharmacological studies met the inclusion criteria [ 17 , 30 ]. De Luca et al performed a clinical trial in which 69 long-term COVID-19 patients were divided into three groups: group 1, recurrent PEA-LUT plus olfactory training group ( n = 43); group 2, recurrent pea-lut alone group ( n = 16); and group 3, individuals who were exposed to olfactory training; these patients continued olfactory treatment while receiving PEA-LUT ( n = 10).…”

“…They reported significant enhancements in the PRMQ and MoCA scores among those receiving PEA-LUT. Additionally, a secondary analysis of a subset of patients who received both PEA-LUT and corticosteroids ( n = 7) versus those who received PEA-LUT alone ( n = 19) revealed no significant difference in outcomes between the two groups [ 30 ].…”