Do gastrointestinal symptoms influence neurocognitive functioning in COVID-19 patients?

SARS-Cov-19 virus is known to attack multiple organ systems including the brain and as a result, numerous of these patients manifest neurocognitive disorders. Moreover COVID-19, causes gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea or constipation, loss of appetite and weight loss and these symptoms have been linked to neurocognitive dysfunction. According to studies, COVID-19 patients who report gastrointestinal symptoms as the predominant manifestations, perform worse on neurocognitive tests than those who do not suffer from such symptoms. In this study, we examined whether hospitalized COVID-19 patients with gastrointestinal symptoms presented neurocognitive dysfunction.

The study enrolled 92 COVID-19 patients, hospitalized for 6-20 days, who were divided into 2 groups: the gastrointestinal group (GI) (n = 44) who presented with predominant gastrointestinal symptoms such as anorexia, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain and the group without GI symptoms, (nGI) (n = 48), who reported fever, fatigue and symptoms from the respiratory system as the main symptoms. Neurocognitive assessment was performed by questionnaires administered to all patients, three months after the first positive PCR test for COVID-19.

T-test was conducted for each test. Results revealed that patients with GI symptoms had significantly lower performance on neuropsychological functions such as complex scanning and long-term memory, visuospatial perception, executive function, verbal working memory and short-term memory, compared to patients without GI symptoms.

We found that there was a significant relationship between cognitive function and GI symptoms. This indicates that COVID-19 patients with GI symptoms may be at increased risk for developing deficits with their memory and other aspects of cognition.