By Thomas Wallach et al.
Source MedRxiv
Abstract
“Long COVID” (LC) remains an ongoing issue and one which has created a substantial burden of disease. Gastrointestinal LC is relatively poorly understood. In this study we characterize a syndrome of persistent SARS-CoV2 viral material via clinical and histologic data, and RNA sequencing
Methods We reviewed patients aged 5-22 years with an esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) for gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms from 6/2020-6/2023, excluding patients with known histologic disease. Biopsies were sent for immunohistochemical staining. Clinical data was collected. Duodenal, ileal, cecal, and sigmoid colon samples were stained for SARS-CoV-2 using a SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid antibody. Slides were reviewed by a blinded pathologist. 8 patients with known duodenal SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid antigen (SC-NA) positivity and 8 demographically matched IBS matched patients from prior to 2020 were identified for RNA sequencing comparison. Results were compared with public data from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) data repository for intestinal tissue with IBS and epithelial tissues with active SARS-CoV2 infection.
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