2-[18F]-FDG PET for imaging brain involvement in patients with long COVID: perspective of the EANM Neuroimaging Committee.

Although the hypometabolic long COVID brain profile described above seems consistent with hypotheses and findings obtained for other viruses before the COVID-19 outbreak, with symptoms reported by patients with long COVID, and with results obtained from other diagnostic approaches assessing long COVID, the significance of these metabolic abnormalities in the individual patients remains to be determined. 2 Axial slices of a brain FDG PET scan of a patient with a hypometabolic long COVID pattern (A) and in a patient with a normal brain scan (B). Here, in 143 patients diagnosed in accordance with the current WHO definition of post-COVID syndrome, a hypometabolic long COVID pattern was observed in 47% of patients presenting persistent symptoms at an average of 10.9 months after COVID-19 [[28]]. [Extracted from the article]