Association Of Elevated Levels Of Inflammatory Markers And D-Dimer With Psychosis In COVID-19 Patients And A Brief Review Of Possible Underlying Mechanism Of COVID Psychosis: A Retrospective Study In A Tertiary Care Hospital

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 disease is caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). In most of the cases the patients present with typical symptoms of fever, cough, dyspnea, sore throat etc. The involvement of central nervous system by SARS-CoV-2 resulting in encephalopathy, encephalitis and neuropsychiatric symptoms such as anxiety, depression, panic attack and post traumatic symptoms have been described in the literature. But the clinical presentation of Psychosis as a neuropsychiatric manifestation in COVID-19 patients has been described in very few literatures. Our aim of the study was to find out the incidence of Psychosis in COVID-19 patients and its association with elevated levels of inflammatory markers such as IL-6, CRP etc, and with that of elevated coagulation parameter such as D-dimer values. Severity of Pneumonia (by HRCT thorax), neuropsychiatric presentation of Psychosis and the various interventions received by the COVID-19 patients with Psychosis were also studied. Out of 2752 COVID-19 cases new onset COVID Psychosis was seen only in 36 cases with an incidence of 1.308%. Out of these, 30 cases were aged > 60 years (83.3%) with male predominance (n=25)(69.44%) Psychotic manifestations such as delusion, hallucinations and mania were seen in 34 (94%), 32(88.8%) and 28 (77.7%) cases respectively. Copyright © 2022, Research Journal of Pharmaceutical, Biological and Chemical Sciences. All Rights Reserved.