Clinical symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and outcome of COVID-19-associated encephalitis: A systematic review of case reports and case series.

INTRODUCTION: Since COVID-19 outbreak, various studies mentioned the occurrence of neurological disorders. Of these, encephalitis is known as a critical neurological complication in COVID-19 patients. Numerous case reports and case series have found encephalitis in relation to COVID-19, which have not been systematically reviewed. This study aims to evaluate the clinical symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and outcome of COVID-19-associated encephalitis. METHODS: We used the Pubmed/Medline, Embase, and Web of Science databases to search for reports on COVID-19-associated encephalitis from January 1, 2019, to March 7, 2021. The irrelevant studies were excluded based on screening and further evaluation. Then, the information relating diagnosis, treatment, clinical manifestations, comorbidities, and outcome was extracted and evaluated. RESULTS: From 4455 initial studies, 45 articles met our criteria and were selected for further evaluation. Included publications reported an overall number of 53 COVID-19-related encephalitis cases. MRI showed hyperintensity of brain regions including white matter (44.68%), temporal lobe (17.02%), and thalamus (12.76%). Also, brain CT scan revealed the hypodensity of the white matter (17.14%) and cerebral hemorrhages/hemorrhagic foci (11.42%) as the most frequent findings. The IV methylprednisolone/oral prednisone (36.11%), IV immunoglobulin (27.77%), and acyclovir (16.66%) were more preferred for COVID-19 patients with encephalitis. From the 46 patients, 13 (28.26%) patients were died in the hospital. CONCLUSION: In this systematic review, characteristics of COVID-19-associated encephalitis including clinical symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and outcome were described. COVID-19-associated encephalitis can accompany with other neurological symptoms and involve different brain. Although majority of encephalitis condition are reversible, but it can lead to life-threatening status. Therefore, further investigation of COVID-19-associated encephalitis is required.

Neurological manifestations in patients with COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

INTRODUCTION: The intensification of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) complications, severe symptoms, and high mortality rate has led researchers to focus on this significant issue. While respiratory and cardiac complications have been described as high-risk manifestations in patients with COVID-19, neurological complications can also enhance mortality. This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of neurological complications arises from SARS-CoV-2 and assess the mortality rate from neurological complications. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Literature review was conducted by searching in PubMed/Medline, Web of Sciences, and Embase. After performing search strategies with relevant terms, a number of articles were excluded, including review articles, systematic review or meta-analysis, duplicate publication of same researchers, congress abstracts, animal studies, case reports, case series, and articles reporting a history of neurological features prior to COVID-19 infection. After retrieving the data, statistical analysis was performed using the STATA Version 14 software. RESULTS: From 4455 retrieved publications, 20 articles were selected for further analysis. Among 18,258 included patients, 2791 showed neurological symptoms, which were classified into different groups. Headache, confusion, and fatigue were reported as the most non-specific neurological features in confirmed COVID-19 patients. Psychiatric symptoms, CNS disorders, cerebrovascular disorders, CNS inflammatory disorders, PNS disorders, neuromuscular disorders, etc., were defined as specific neurological manifestations. The pooled prevalence of neurological manifestations and mortality rate of COVID-19 patients with neurological features were estimated to be 23.0% (95% CI: 17.8-29.2) and 29.1% (95% CI: 20.3-39.8), respectively. CONCLUSION: Neurological manifestations may commonly happen in patients with COVID-19. This study reported a high prevalence of neurological complications and mortality rates in COVID-19 patients. Therefore, patients with COVID-19 who indicated neurological symptoms should be taken seriously and should receive early treatment to prevent undesirable events.