COVID-19 infection causing residual gastrointestinal symptoms – a single UK centre case series, 2022, Cooney et al

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.

Open access, https://www.rcpjournals.org/content/clinmedicine/early/2022/02/01/clinmed.2021-0522

 

So, Covid is recognised as causing problems in the lungs, the brain, it affects women's reproductive organs, it has gastrointestinal effects, causes problems with the kidneys, causes fatigue...

But ME? That [Edit : allegedly] only causes fatigue, they never pay attention to anything else.