Neuropathology and Inflammatory Cell Characterization in 10 Autoptic COVID-19 Brains

COVID-19 presents with a wide range of clinical neurological manifestations. It has been recognized that SARS-CoV-2 infection affects both the central and peripheral nervous system, leading to smell and taste disturbances; acute ischemic and hemorrhagic cerebrovascular disease; en-cephalopathies and seizures; and causes most surviving patients to have long lasting neurological symptoms. Despite this, typical neuropathological features associated with the infection have still not been identified. Studies of post-mortem examinations of the cerebral cortex are obtained with difficulty due to laboratory safety concerns. In addition, they represent cases with different neurological symptoms, age or comorbidities, thus a larger number of brain autoptic data from multiple institutions would be crucial. Histopathological findings described here are aimed to increase the current knowledge on neuropathology of COVID-19 patients. We report post-mortem neuropatho-logical findings of ten COVID-19 patients. A wide range of neuropathological lesions were seen. The cerebral cortex of all patients showed vascular changes, hyperemia of the meninges and peri-vascular inflammation in the cerebral parenchyma with hypoxic neuronal injury. Perivascular lym-phocytic inflammation of predominantly CD8-positive T cells mixed with CD68-positive macro-phages, targeting the disrupted vascular wall in the cerebral cortex, cerebellum and pons were seen. Our findings support recent reports highlighting a role of microvascular injury in COVID-19 neurological manifestations. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.