Table 1.
Rate estimations of neurological symptoms, loosely organized by frequency, are broken down into central nervous system, peripheral nervous system, and skeletal muscular injury categories, among clinical COVID-19 patients. Severe vs non-severe COVID-19 cases were distinguished based on respiratory/pneumonia metrics with severe cases passing the criterion for mechanical ventilation [71,73].
| Neurological manifestation |
Severe case | Non-severe case | Unspecified severity or case studies |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central nervous system | Encephalopathy | 65-84% [73,75] | 13% [73] | 42% [76] |
| Dysexecutive syndrome | 36% [75] | - | - | |
| Dizziness | 5-30% [71-73,77] | 7-30% [71-73,77] | - | |
| Headache | 8-32% [71-73,77] | 6-40% [72,73,77,78] | - | |
| Altered state of consciousness | 5-39% [71-73] | 2-7% [71-73] | 33% [76] | |
| Delirium | 11-33% [79-81] | - | - | |
| Nausea / vomiting | 8-11% [77] | 2-10% [77,78] | - | |
| Ischemic stroke | 1.2-5.7% [71-73,82] | 0.5-1.4% [71-73,82] | 1.6-5.4% [76,83] | |
| Acute hemorrhage | 0.7-0.9% [72,73] | 0% [72,73] | 4.5% [76] | |
| Acute encephalitis | 0% [72,73] | 0.2-0.3% [72,73] | - [12] | |
| Meningitis / myelitis | 0% [73] | 0% [73] | - [12,84] | |
| Ataxia | 1.1% [71] | 0% [71] | - | |
| Seizures | 0-1.2% [71-73] | 0-1% [71-73] | - | |
| Peripheral nervous system | Taste impairment (ageusia/dysgeusia) | 3-4% [71,72] | 7-55% [71,72,78] | - |
| Smell impairment (anosmia/dysosmia) | 3-13% [71-73] | 6-86% [71-73,85] | - | |
| Nerve pain (neuralgia) | 4.5% [71] | 0.8% [71] | - | |
| Vision impairment | 2.3% [71] | 0.8% [71] | - | |
| Polyneuropathy | 0-1.5% [72,73] | 0-0.2% [72,73] | - | |
| Guillain-Barré syndrome + variants | 0% [73] | 0% [73] | 0.004-0.005% [86-89] | |
| Skeletal muscular injury | Myalgias | 42-65% [72,73] | 10-53% [72,73,78] | - |
| Rhabdomyolysis | 2.2-13% [72,73] | 0.3-0.4% [72,73] | - | |
| Overall | 46-93% [71-73] | 30-79% [71-73] | - |