@article {Cooney181, author = {Joseph Cooney and Priscilla Appiahene and Ross Findlay and Lulia Al-Hillawi and Khizar Rafique and William Laband and Benjamin Shandro and Andrew Poullis}, title = {COVID-19 infection causing residual gastrointestinal symptoms {\textendash} a single UK centre case series}, volume = {22}, number = {2}, pages = {181--183}, year = {2022}, doi = {10.7861/clinmed.2021-0522}, publisher = {Royal College of Physicians}, abstract = {Although COVID-19 was first recognised as an acute respiratory illness, extra-pulmonary manifestations are increasingly being recognised. Acute gastrointestinal side effects have been well reported with COVID-19 infection and are estimated to affect around 17\% of patients. With COVID-19 still being a relatively new illness, the chronic gastrointestinal symptoms are less well characterised. Post-infectious irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) can occur following bacterial and viral infections, and with ACE-2 receptors being shown to be present in the gastrointestinal tract and SARS-Cov-2 RNA being present in stool, SARS-CoV-2 is now appreciated as an enteric pathogen. In our study, we survey acute and chronic gastrointestinal symptoms after COVID-19 infection. We have conducted one of the few UK studies on gastrointestinal symptoms, with the longest follow-up duration of 6 months. We have found that gastrointestinal symptoms are common at 6 months, affecting 43.8\% of our patients. Further research is needed to explore whether this represents a new post-COVID-19 IBS, which has not previous been described in the literature, including its clinical course and response to any potential medical therapies.}, issn = {1470-2118}, URL = {https://www.rcpjournals.org/content/22/2/181}, eprint = {https://www.rcpjournals.org/content/22/2/181.full.pdf}, journal = {Clinical Medicine} }