Neurological Damage by Coronaviruses: A Catastrophe in the Queue!

Mishra, Ritu; Banerjea, Akhil C.

Neurological disorders caused by neuroviral infections are an obvious pathogenic manifestation. However, non-neurotropic viruses or peripheral viral infections pose a considerable challenge as their neuropathological manifestations do not emerge because of primary infection. Their secondary or bystander pathologies develop much later, like a syndrome, during and after the recovery of patients from the primary disease. Massive inflammation caused by peripheral viral infections can trigger multiple neurological anomalies. These neurological damages may range from a general cognitive and motor dysfunction up to a wide spectrum of CNS anomalies, such as Acute Necrotizing Hemorrhagic Encephalopathy, Guillain-Barré syndrome, Encephalitis, Meningitis, anxiety, and other audio-visual disabilities. Peripheral viruses like Measles virus, Enteroviruses, Influenza viruses (HIN1 series), SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV, and, recently, SARS-CoV-2 are reported to cause various neurological manifestations in patients and are proven to be neuropathogenic even in cellular and animal model systems. This review presents a comprehensive picture of CNS susceptibilities toward these peripheral viral infections and explains some common underlying themes of their neuropathology in the human brain.