New study suggests coronavirus can infect the intestinal tract weeks and months after experiencing COVID-19.

The researchers found that in the study, 1 in 7 COVID patients had genetic residues of the virus in their feces at least four months after the initial diagnosis, that is, long after they had stopped shedding the virus from their respiratory tract..

This may explain why some COVID patients develop gastrointestinal symptoms such as abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, says senior researcher Dr. Ami Bhatt, assistant professor of medicine and genetics at Stanford University..

“We found that people who had cleared their respiratory infections—meaning they no longer tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in their respiratory tract—continued to shed SARS-CoV-2 RNA in their faeces,” Bhatt said.. “And these people, in particular, had a high incidence of gastrointestinal symptoms.”.

Bhatt and colleagues suggested that long-term intestinal infection may also contribute to long-term COVID symptoms in some people..

“Prolonged COVID may be due to an ongoing immune response to SARS-CoV-2, but it could also be that we have people with persistent infections hiding in niches other than the respiratory tract, such as the gastrointestinal tract,”.

For this study, the research team took advantage of an early clinical trial started in May 2020 at Stanford to test a possible treatment for mild COVID infection.. More than 110 patients were followed up to follow the evolution of their symptoms and regular stool samples were collected as part of an effort to track their viral shedding..

Many other studies have focused on viral shedding in patients with severe cases of COVID, but this is the first time that viral RNA has been assessed in fecal samples taken from people with mild to moderate COVID..

The researchers found that about half of the patients (49%) had remnants of COVID RNA in their stool within the first week after diagnosis.. But four months after diagnosis, with no more COVID left in the lungs, nearly 13% of patients continued to shed viral RNA in their stools.. Researchers found that about 4% still lose viral RNA in their feces seven months after initial diagnosis..

Bhatt was quick to note that the RNA was the genetic remnants of the coronavirus and not a real live virus, so it's unlikely that human poop could be contagious..

“While there have been anecdotal reports of people being able to isolate live SARS-CoV-2 virus from stool, I think this is probably much less common than being able to isolate live virus from the respiratory tract,” Bhatt said.. – I don't think our study suggests a lot of fecal-oral transmission.

SARS-CoV-2 can stay in the gut or even other tissues for a longer period of time than in the respiratory tract, and there it can continue to wreak havoc on our immune systems and cause some of these long-term effects..

Long COVID has become such a well-established problem that many major medical centers have set up their own long COVID clinics to try to figure out symptoms and potential treatments, said Dr. William Schaffner, medical director of the National Infectious Diseases Foundation..

“These findings add to the notion that cells in the gut themselves may be involved in the COVID viral infection, and they could potentially be responsible for some of the symptoms—abdominal pain, nausea, just intestinal upset—that could be one aspect of long-term COVID.”.

Bhatt said the findings also have implications for public health efforts to predict new COVID outbreaks by testing community wastewater for signs of the virus, and Schaffner agrees..

medical-heal. en.