correlation of inflammatory biomarkers with neuropsychological performance of covid-19 survivors after icu discharge: 20 months follow-up

Background: covid-19 infection may be related to development of neural damage and neural inflammation. accumulating evidence highlighted the high prevalence of long-term mental health problems among covid-19 survivors.aim: the present study was conducted with aim to evaluate the long-term psychosomatic effects of covid-19 and their relationship with inflammatory biomarkers among covid-19 survivors after icu discharge.method: this prospective study was conducted on patients discharged from the covid-19 intensive care unit (icu) between june and august 2021. depression, anxiety, health anxiety, sleep quality and cognitive abilities were assessed. also, inflammatory biomarkers including erythrocyte sedimentation rate (esr), c-reactive protein (crp), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (nlr), ferritin and d-dimer were measured. data were analyzed using spss (version 22.0) and pearson correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. p<0.05 was considered significant.results: among 78 survivors, 26% and 45.5% had moderate/severe degree of depressive and anxiety symptoms, respectively. moreover, 25% of participants reported health anxiety and 61.8% poor sleep quality. the cognitive abilities had a significant inverse correlation with d-dimer level (r=-0.44, p<0.001). moreover, bdi-ii score was significantly correlated with esr level (r=0.29, p<0.06). the only factor associated with bdi-ii depression score was esr levels (β=0.37, p=0.013). d-dimer was independently associated with cognitive abilities score (β=-0.45, p=0.001).implications for practice: although there was a high prevalence of mental disorders among patients discharged from covid-19 icus even after 20 months, our results do not support a dominant role for inflammatory background (during acute phase of covid-19) to explain the neuropsychological impairments long time after covid-19 infection.