Constipation, diarrhea, nausea. These are all complaints that patients with lung covid or long-term covid regularly report. That sounds remarkable for a virus that mainly affects the respiratory tract, but a new American study confirms that there is indeed a connection between a corona infection and persistent stomach and intestinal complaints.
In the study published in Nature the researchers compared the medical records of nearly 155,000 corona patients with those of about 5.6 million patients who did not contract the corona virus. The analysis showed that corona patients run a 36 percent higher risk of long-term stomach and intestinal complaints that they did not have before the corona infection. Usually it involves constipation, abdominal pain and diarrhea. The most common diagnoses are reflux and peptic ulcer. Serious conditions such as pancreatitis are also becoming more common, but remain rare.
The used dataset mainly contains men with an average age of 61 years. Although the percentage among the 17,000 women is the same, according to the researchers. The patients became infected between March 2020 and January 2021. New virus variants may have a different impact and several studies have already shown that vaccines mitigate the symptoms of lung covid.
To treat
You officially suffer from lung covid if you still have complaints twelve weeks after your corona infection and no other cause can be found. Of all corona patients, 1 in 7 to 8 would be affected. The most common complaints are extreme fatigue, concentration problems and shortness of breath at the slightest effort.
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The link between covid and these complaints is less obvious. “It is difficult to put our finger on this because we often do not know the normal values before the disease,” says Sabeth De Waele, intensivist and head of the clinical nutrition and dietetics department at UZ Brussel. Complaints may have been present for some time or stem from a changed diet.
But according to De Waele, this study confirms that the corona virus does play a role. “The strength is in the large numbers. As a result, all kinds of possible factors other than the virus are filtered out.”
There is no explanation yet. The American researchers make two suggestions. Intestinal cells have receptors through which the coronavirus can penetrate. It may lie dormant there and trigger the immune system. The second explanation lies in the brain. Stress and restlessness, due to an infection, can manifest itself in the intestines.
The good news is that the symptoms are almost always treatable. There are remedies for nausea and a good dietician often has advice. “It can take a long time, but over time the symptoms usually go away on their own. Of those who had a loss of smell and taste during the first wave, we know that one year later, 97 percent have recovered.”
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