Long-term gastrointestinal outcomes of COVID-19, 2023, Evan Xu et al

Abstract
A comprehensive evaluation of the risks and 1-year burdens of gastrointestinal disorders in the post-acute phase of COVID-19 is needed but is not yet available. Here we use the US Department of Veterans Affairs national health care databases to build a cohort of 154,068 people with COVID-19, 5,638,795 contemporary controls, and 5,859,621 historical controls to estimate the risks and 1-year burdens of a set of pre-specified incident gastrointestinal outcomes.

We show that beyond the first 30 days of infection, people with COVID-19 exhibited increased risks and 1-year burdens of incident gastrointestinal disorders spanning several disease categories including motility disorders, acid related disorders (dyspepsia, gastroesophageal reflux disease, peptic ulcer disease), functional intestinal disorders, acute pancreatitis, hepatic and biliary disease.

The risks were evident in people who were not hospitalized during the acute phase of COVID-19 and increased in a graded fashion across the severity spectrum of the acute phase of COVID-19 (non-hospitalized, hospitalized, and admitted to intensive care). The risks were consistent in comparisons including the COVID-19 vs the contemporary control group and COVID-19 vs the historical control group as the referent category.

Altogether, our results show that people with SARS-CoV-2 infection are at increased risk of gastrointestinal disorders in the post-acute phase of COVID-19. Post-covid care should involve attention to gastrointestinal health and disease.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-36223-7

 

And those are just recorded diagnoses. The vast majority of GI issues, IBS type mainly, are not recorded. They're likely in the "functional" label here, but only a fraction. So this massively undercounts the issue, likely 4-5x over. Not surprisingly, also massively gaslighted. Never has a word been used so often about so many things more cheaply than "anxiety". As words go, it's the cheapest of them all.

Again one of those things where all it takes is to pay attention. It's reported at such a high frequency that it's impossible to miss unless one really, really does not want to see it. Which is, you know, the reality we have, different from the one on paper.

 

The effect of long Covid on the digestive system is an important, yet under-researched area. While I'm not a fan of their use of the word functional, I'm otherwise pleased.

 

Not that it matters in terms of the main findings of the paper but there seems to be an error in the discussion on the various possible mechanisms.