Post-COVID Condition Does Not Alter Cognitive Functions in Young Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study in North India

Background Long COVID, or post-COVID condition, includes multi-system chronic sequelae that can last weeks, months, or even years in some individuals after recovery from COVID-19 infection. Prominent among these long-term sequelae are cognitive deficits that may prove to be problematic, especially for the working young adult population. The present study aimed to determine whether cognitive deficits are observed long after recovery from mild COVID-19 infection. Methods In this cross-sectional observational study, 29 young adult undergraduate medical students with a history of mild COVID-19 infection at least two years prior were included as cases, while 29 age- and sex-matched undergraduate medical students with no history of COVID-19 were recruited as controls. Sociodemographic data were collected, and the participants were then administered a series of cognitive tests using the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Toolbox V3 software (Toolbox Assessments Inc., Chicago, USA; https://nihtoolbox.org/) to evaluate the cognitive functions, including executive function, cognitive flexibility, attention, working and episodic memory, and processing speed. Results The mean age of the cases and controls was 19.37 ± 0.92 and 19.65 ± 0.99 years, respectively. However,there was no statistically significant difference in cognitive function performance across any of the tested domains between cases and controls. Conclusion The results of our study indicate that, compared to healthy controls, cognitive functions were not impaired in young adults who previously had symptomatic mild COVID-19 infection.