Submitted by lac59 on Thu, 06/11/2025 - 14:52
A study led by the University of Cambridge Department of Clinical Neurosciences has shown that ultra-high field MRI scans can measure brain metabolites in COVID-19 patients. The study revealed higher levels of an inflammation marker called myo-inositol in patients who reported poorer mental health after a COVID-19 infection. They also found there were no marked differences in the brain chemistry of the COVID-19 patients in the study compared to healthy volunteers.
Journal publication: Frontiers | Brainstem neurochemical profiles after hospitalisation for COVID-19: a 7T MR spectroscopy study
Their findings are another piece of evidence to assist the ongoing investigation of the role of brain inflammation following COVID-19.
Hospitalisation for severe and acute COVID-19 has a substantial impact on long-term cognitive and mental health, with three quarters of patients still presenting with significant issues after 5 months. The underlying changes in the brain causing these symptoms remains unclear, but recent studies have suggested changes in the brainstem during the infection may play a part.
The team at Cambridge together with colleagues at the University of Oxford, aimed to test whether neurochemicals in the brainstem were different in patients who had been hospitalised for COVID-19 compared to a control group of healthy volunteers.
To do this they used a newer type of MRI scanner called 7T MRI. The T stands for tesla, which is the unit of measurement of the strength of magnetic fields. Commonly used MRI machines have a magnetic field strength of 1.5 to 3 T – meaning this new type of MRI is over twice as powerful.
Most MRI scans make a picture of a patient’s anatomy by imaging water and fat. This study used MR spectroscopy, which is a type of scan that measures the chemicals in the brain. Running spectroscopy on the 7T MRI allowed researchers to see about 20 chemicals, including myo-inositol which shows the presence of inflammation.
Besides its clinical implications, this study marks another step for the availability of 7T MR spectroscopy by applying the method at both Oxford and Cambridge to study brain metabolism in patients. This was a collaborative effort between researchers at Cambridge and Oxford, which began and took place during the peak times of the first and second COVID lockdowns.
The results of this study have just been published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.
Breathlessness a clue …
One of the more troubling after-effects of COVID-19 infection is lingering shortness of breath that can continue well beyond recovery from the initial infection. Drawing on initial MRI scans from hospitalized patients, the researchers hypothesised that the coronavirus causing COVID-19 might trigger inflammation or damage directly in the brainstem—the area responsible for regulating breathing—which could account for these persistent symptoms.
What did they discover?
49 volunteers assisted the study, 15 of whom with no history of COVID-19 infection, all underwent a 7T MRI scan to measure the levels of metabolites in their brain.
Reassuringly, they found that people who had been hospitalised with COVID-19 did not show major long-term differences in brain chemistry compared to healthy volunteers.
However, within the group of COVID-19 survivors, they did find something important: the patients with higher levels of a brain chemical called myo-inositol—which is linked to inflammation— also reported poorer mental wellbeing after their illness. These levels also reflected how much inflammation the person experienced during their hospital stay.
The paper presents these findings and concludes with the recommendation that 7T MRI technology can have a transformative impact on studies of brain chemistry in the future.
“From an imaging perspective, we were particularly proud of what this study achieved,” said Carina Graf, a PhD Student at the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at Cambridge University. “The newer 7T MRI scanners enable much clearer measurement of chemicals such as myo-inositol. This demonstrates convincingly that ambitious clinical studies using newer 7T MRI scanners are both feasible and impactful.”
Looking ahead, the team at Cambridge’s Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre will have its MRI scanner upgraded to the new Terra.X platform in February 2026, which will place the University and city at the forefront of ultra-high-field clinical imaging in the UK.
For interviews and further information on this story please contact the research team directly: Carina Graf: cg738@cam.ac.uk & Chris Rodgers: ctr28@cam.ac.uk
