COVID-19 Presenting as a Seizure: A Kenyan Case Report

Abstract

The new coronavirus quickly spread throughout the world in late 2019 and became a pandemic in early 2020. The most common symptoms observed are fever, dry cough, loss of taste and smell, and respiratory distress. Other rarer complications can involve the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, or neurological systems. Of the neurological complications, epileptic seizures are a subject of particular interest due to their relatively unknown and widespread etiologies. It is understood that the entry or production of pro-inflammatory cytokines during a COVID-19 infection can result in neurotransmitter modulation and ion channel dysfunction, leading to neuronal hyperexcitability, presenting as seizures. To the best of our knowledge, we present the first case in sub-Saharan Africa of a COVID-19 positive patient presenting to our institution with a reported seizure followed by confusion. Our case highlights the need to broaden our differential diagnosis to include COVID-19 infections in patients presenting with seizures.