Association between COVID-19 and Gastrointestinal Manifestations and Available Treatment Options

Corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging outbreak which has involved almost all of the countries of the world now. While the main symptoms of the disease are known to be respiratory symptoms like coughing and shortness of breath, extrapulmonary symptoms have also been reported in many cases of COVID-19. Gastrointestinal (GI) manifestations including diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain and liver injury are amongst the most common extrapulmonary symptoms in COVID-19 patients.

We used Scopus, PubMed, and Google scholar databases for this review. The last search was run on November 21, 2020

Liver injury is mostly accompanied by an elevation in AST and ALT levels and a slight increase in serum billirubin levels that is observed in approximately 14.8-53.1% of COVID-19 patients.1-29% of COVID-19 patients present nausea and vomiting and 2 to 10% develop diarrhea. Abdominal pain is seen in about 2.2-6% of COVID-19 patients and most frequently seen in severely ill patients.

Diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting and liver injury are the most common GI symptoms in COVID-19 patients while abdominal pain is not pretty common. There are no medications of proven efficacy to treat COVID-19 or its GI manifestations so far.