TY - JOUR T1 - Gastrointestinal symptoms of 95 cases with SARS-CoV-2 infection JF - Gut JO - Gut SP - 997 LP - 1001 DO - 10.1136/gutjnl-2020-321013 VL - 69 IS - 6 AU - Lu Lin AU - Xiayang Jiang AU - Zhenling Zhang AU - Siwen Huang AU - Zhenyi Zhang AU - Zhaoxiong Fang AU - Zhiqiang Gu AU - Liangqing Gao AU - Honggang Shi AU - Lei Mai AU - Yuan Liu AU - Xianqi Lin AU - Renxu Lai AU - Zhixiang Yan AU - Xiaofeng Li AU - Hong Shan Y1 - 2020/06/01 UR - http://gut.bmj.com/content/69/6/997.abstract N2 - Objective To study the GI symptoms in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infected patients.Design We analysed epidemiological, demographic, clinical and laboratory data of 95 cases with SARS-CoV-2 caused coronavirus disease 2019. Real-time reverse transcriptase PCR was used to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in faeces and GI tissues.Results Among the 95 patients, 58 cases exhibited GI symptoms of which 11 (11.6%) occurred on admission and 47 (49.5%) developed during hospitalisation. Diarrhoea (24.2%), anorexia (17.9%) and nausea (17.9%) were the main symptoms with five (5.3%), five (5.3%) and three (3.2%) cases occurred on the illness onset, respectively. A substantial proportion of patients developed diarrhoea during hospitalisation, potentially aggravated by various drugs including antibiotics. Faecal samples of 65 hospitalised patients were tested for the presence of SARS-CoV-2, including 42 with and 23 without GI symptoms, of which 22 (52.4%) and 9 (39.1%) were positive, respectively. Six patients with GI symptoms were subjected to endoscopy, revealing oesophageal bleeding with erosions and ulcers in one severe patient. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in oesophagus, stomach, duodenum and rectum specimens for both two severe patients. In contrast, only duodenum was positive in one of the four non-severe patients.Conclusions GI tract may be a potential transmission route and target organ of SARS-CoV-2. ER -