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World J Gastroenterol. May 21, 2021; 27(19): 2341-2352
Published online May 21, 2021. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v27.i19.2341
Pathophysiological mechanisms underlying gastrointestinal symptoms in patients with COVID-19
Byungchang Jin, Rajan Singh, Se Eun Ha, Hannah Zogg, Paul J Park, Seungil Ro
Byungchang Jin, Rajan Singh, Se Eun Ha, Hannah Zogg, Seungil Ro, Department of Physiology and Cell Biology, University of Nevada School of Medicine, Reno, NV 89557, United States
Paul J Park, Department of Medicine, Renown Health, Reno, NV 89557, United States
Author contributions: Jin B, Singh R and Ro S conceived the study; Jin B and Singh R drafted the original manuscript and are joint first authors; Jin B, Singh R, Ha SE, Zogg H, Park PJ, and Ro S revised the manuscript and approved the submitted version.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Seungil Ro, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Physiology and Cell Biology, University of Nevada School of Medicine, Building L-207E, 1664 North Virginia Street, Reno, NV 89557, United States. sro@med.unr.edu
Received: January 29, 2021
Peer-review started: January 29, 2021
First decision: March 6, 2021
Revised: March 17, 2021
Accepted: April 22, 2021
Article in press: April 22, 2021
Published online: May 21, 2021
Processing time: 103 Days and 12.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Since the declaration of the pandemic on March 11, 2020 by the World Health Organization, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has quickly become a global health threat. In addition to respiratory symptoms, gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms have been widely observed in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. Here, we have summarized the GI symptoms seen in COVID-19 patients that have been reported in nineteen studies and recapitulated potential mechanisms that are responsible for the GI symptoms in COVID-19 patients. This biochemical understanding may assist in new therapeutic approaches.