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Updated: Dec 25, 2025
Adapting Gastrointestinal Organoids for Pathogen Infection and Single Cell Sequencing under Biosafety Level 3 BSL-3 Conditions
Published on: September 10, 2021
Gastrointestinal symptoms of 95 cases with SARS-CoV-2 infection
Lu Lin1, Xiayang Jiang1, Zhenling Zhang1
1Department of Gastroenterology, Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China.
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.
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