Acute neurological manifestations associated with SARS-CoV-2 virus

Abstract

In 2019, an outbreak of respiratory disease associated with a new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, started in the city of Wuhan, China. Since then, this highly transmissible virus has motivated extreme isolation measures worldwide, in an attempt to mitigate the infection of entire populations, concomitantly saturating medical services and collapsing health systems. Several coronaviruses are associated with neurological syndromes such as encephalitis, myelitis and Guillain-Barré syndrome, among them SARS-CoV-1, phylogenetically the human coronavirus closest to SARS-CoV-2. Thus, it is expected that similar manifestations affect patients in the current epidemic. OBJECTIVES: To characterize the epidemiological, clinical, laboratory, electrophysiological and radiological profile of patients affected by myelitis, encephalitis and / or acute peripheral polyneuropathy in the presence of an epidemic associated with the SARS-Cov-2 virus. METHODS: This is a prospective observational study, which will evaluate the epidemiological, clinical, laboratory, electrophysiological and radiological characteristics of patients diagnosed with encephalitis, myelitis and / or acute peripheral polyneuropathy during the SARS-Cov-2 epidemic period, assisted in co-participant institutions. Patients who are considered to be suspected SARS-CoV-2 cases will be selected according to criteria defined by the Ministry of Health (MS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in the presence of proven community transmission, who present concomitant or subsequent clinical suspicion (up to 60 days after an event associated with SARS-CoV-2) of viral encephalitis, viral myelitis and / or acute peripheral polyneuropathy. (AU)