Skip to main content

Clinical features and outcomes of COVID-19 patients with gastrointestinal symptoms

The emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has put unprecedented challenges on the public health [1, 2]. It is well- known that most of the infected patients presented with fever or respiratory manifestations, while a portion of patients presented with gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms [2]. In early published study from the USA, SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA has been present in the feces of the illness [3]. However, part of COVID-19 patients present GI symptoms at the onset of diseases may be overlooked by clinicians [4].

Our experience was conducted in Ningbo First Hospital, Jingzhou Central Hospital, and Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese & Western Medicine. One hundred fifty-seven patients we treated were diagnosed as COVID-19 according to the World Health Organization interim guidance [5]. Nasopharyngeal swabs and chest computed tomography were collected from all patients. Demographic data, symptoms, laboratory values, comorbidities, and clinical outcomes were collected from the electronic medical records.

Of 157 patients with COVID-19, 63 (40.1%) presented with 1 or more GI symptoms (anorexia, nausea, or diarrhea). The mean age of 157 patients was 49.3 years (standard deviation, SD, 14.5), and 74 (47.1%) were male.

Of the 63 patients, 21 (33.3%) had nausea, 47 (74.6%) had anorexia, and 25 (39.7%) had diarrhea. The mean age of those patients was 51.9 years (SD, 14.9). Twenty-four (38.1%) were male, and 24 (38.1%) had chronic diseases. The most common symptoms were cough, fatigue, fever, and muscle soreness. Neither the median white blood cell nor lymphocyte counts were different between patients with and without GI symptoms (Table 1).

Table 1 Demographics and clinical features of coronavirus disease 2019

There was no significant difference in viral shedding, the time to clinical recovery, or hospitalization duration between patients with and without GI symptoms (Table 1). Among patients with GI symptoms, 63.5% received corticosteroids treatment, which is much lower than patients without GI symptoms group (63.5% vs 76.6%; p = 0.0751). Moreover, less patients with GI symptoms developed into severe cases compared with those without GI symptoms (12.7% vs 35.1%; p = 0.0016).

In our experience, 4 out of 10 patients with COVID-19 have significant GI symptoms. There was no significant difference in gender, age, and comorbidities between patients with and without GI symptoms. Leukocyte and lymphocyte counts were similar between the two groups. Besides, there was no significant difference in viral shedding, the time to clinical recovery, or hospitalization duration between patients with and without GI symptoms. Nonetheless, less patients with GI symptoms received corticosteroids and developed into severe cases.

This study suggested that GI symptoms in COVID-19 are frequent but are not associated with the severity of diseases or worse outcomes. However, because SARS-CoV-2 can be found in patient feces and the digestive system, we should be cautious with these potential routes for transmission [2, 3]. This study is limited by the lacked of data of reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction on COVID-19 in GI specimens. Our observations indicate that a substantial number of patients present with predominantly GI symptoms, and caution about this atypical presentation is necessary.

Availability of data and materials

Participant data without names and identifiers will be made available after approval from the corresponding author.

Abbreviations

COVID-19:

Coronavirus disease 2019

SARS-CoV-2:

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2

GI:

Gastrointestinal

IQR:

Interquartile range

SD:

Standard deviation

WBC:

White blood cell

ALT:

Alanine aminotransferase

AST:

Aspartate aminotransferase

References

  1. Zhu N, Zhang D, Wang W, Li X, Yang B, Song J, et al. A novel coronavirus from patients with pneumonia in China, 2019. N Engl J Med. 2020;382(8):727–33.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Guan WJ, Ni ZY, Hu Y, Liang WH, Ou CQ, He JX, et al. Clinical characteristics of coronavirus disease 2019 in China. N Engl J Med. 2020;382(18):1708–20.

  3. Holshue ML, DeBolt C, Lindquist S, Lofy KH, Wiesman J, Bruce H, et al. First case of 2019 novel coronavirus in the United States. N Engl J Med. 2020;382(10):929–36.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Luo S, Zhang X, Xu H. Don’t overlook digestive symptoms in patients with 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2020;18(7):1636–7.

  5. World Health Organization. Clinical management of severe acute respiratory infection when COVID-19 is suspected: interim guidance, 13 March 2020. Available from: https://www.who.int/publications-detail/clinical-management-of-severe-acute-respiratory-infection-when-novel-coronavirus-(ncov)-infection-is-suspected. Accessed 18 Mar 2020.

Download references

Acknowledgements

Not applicable.

Funding

This work was supported by the Medical and Health Program of Zhejiang (2019KY156 and 2019KY563).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

CC, LH, JX, and XC design the study; CC, MC, LH, and JX acquired and interpreted the data; CC, MC, and JX analyzed the data and wrote the paper; XC supervised the study. All authors have seen and approved the final draft.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xiaomin Chen.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethical approvals for this study were obtained from the Ethics Commission of Ningbo First Hospital (2020-R017) and the Ethics Commission of Jingzhou Central Hospital (2020-2-19). Written informed consent was waived due to the rapid emergence of this disease.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

Authors have disclosed no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cao, C., Chen, M., He, L. et al. Clinical features and outcomes of COVID-19 patients with gastrointestinal symptoms. Crit Care 24, 340 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-020-03034-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-020-03034-x

Keywords