RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 COVID-19 infection causing residual gastrointestinal symptoms – a single UK centre case series
JF Clinical Medicine
JO Clin Med
FD Royal College of Physicians
SP 181
OP 183
DO 10.7861/clinmed.2021-0522
VO 22
IS 2
A1 Joseph Cooney
A1 Priscilla Appiahene
A1 Ross Findlay
A1 Lulia Al-Hillawi
A1 Khizar Rafique
A1 William Laband
A1 Benjamin Shandro
A1 Andrew Poullis
YR 2022
UL http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/22/2/181.abstract
AB 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.