• Joseph Cooney, Priscilla Appiahene, Ross Findlay, Lulia Al-Hillawi, Khizar Rafique, William Laband, Benjamin Shandro, and Andrew Poullis.
• St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK josephcooney@doctors.org.uk.
• Clin Med (Lond). 2022 Mar 1; 22 (2): 181183181-183.

AbstractAlthough 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.© Royal College of Physicians 2022. All rights reserved.

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