Gastrointestinal tract symptoms in coronavirus disease 2019: Analysis of clinical symptoms in adult patients

Yong Zhang

Coronavirus is a large virus family that can cause various conditions ranging from the common cold to severe infectious diseases such as SARS and MERS.8 COVID-19 is a recently discovered infection in humans and is now considered a pandemic. 1, 9 The most common clinical presentations associated with coronavirus infection are fever and cough. [2] [3] 9 The results of this study have further proven previous conclusions. Studies have found that gastrointestinal tractsymptoms are one of the common clinical presentations in SARS and MERS. [4] [5] 9 However, recent studies found that diarrhoea is rare in COVID-19, 2-3,10 with an incidence of about 3%. A US study reported that their first patient, who had mild COVID-19, developed diarrhoea lasting for 2 days. 6 In addition, a study reported that diarrhoea may be an initial symptom of COVID-19. 11 In this study, we found that a minority of patients had an initial symptom of diarrhoea. In contrast to the results of previous studies, this study found that diarrhoea, nausea, and vomiting are common in COVID-19. Why are there differences between the results of this study and other past clinical investigations? First, the data sources of these studies vary. The information used by Zhong et al. was obtained from medical records, 3, 10 whereas the data in this study was provided by the patients themselves. Even though this is a retrospective study, the study subjects were adults and most had an educational level of middle school and above, thereby ensuring the reliability and authenticity of the content of this study. Second, the time nodes of the data records are different. The results of this study found that diarrhoea mostly occurred 5 days after the development of initial symptoms; therefore, patients may not have developed gastrointestinal tract symptoms such as diarrhoea, nausea, and vomiting in the other studies. In this study, the mean disease course when patients underwent All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.