Abstract

BACKGROUND
This report is of a 30-year-old woman with an 8-week history of anxiety, depression, insomnia, and mild cognitive impairment following COVID-19 infection, who responded to accelerated bilateral theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (TBS) over the prefrontal cortex.
CASE REPORT
A previously healthy 30-year-old woman visited our psychiatric clinic for symptoms including anxiety, depression, insomnia, and brain fog (mild cognitive impairment) for more than 8 weeks after being diagnosed with COVID-19 on May 9, 2022. Continuous TBS of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), followed by intermittent TBS of the left DLPFC, was performed twice daily over 5 days for a total of 10 sessions. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and subsets of the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS)-Third Edition were administered at baseline and at the end of treatment. After 10 sessions of treatment, her BAI, BDI, HAMD, PSQI, WMS-Logical Memory, WMS-Faces, WMS-Verbal Paired Associates, and WMS-Family Pictures scores had improved from 4, 18, 10, 14, 8, 10, 12, and 8, respectively, to 0, 7, 1, 10, 15, 15, 15, and 10, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS
Accelerated TBS over the bilateral DLPFC may ameliorate long-COVID-associated neuropsychiatric symptoms. Additional trials are warranted to evaluate the effect of neuropsychiatric symptoms following COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19; Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation