Patients with COVID-19 have an active and viral intestinal infection, even in the absence of gastrointestinal symptoms, scientists have discovered.
Coronavirus could continue to infect and reflect the digestive tract after clearing in the airways, researchers at The Chinese University of Hong Kong said on a Monday. The findings, published in the medical journal GUT, have implications for identity and case remedy, they said.
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SARS-CoV-2 is basically transmitted through respiratory droplets: splashes of virus-laden secretions of the mouth and nose, according to the World Health Organization.
However, since the first few weeks of the pandemic, scientists have stated that infectious virus in patients’ faeces would possibly also play a role in transmission.
A February 73 patients hospitalized for coronavirus in China’s Guangdong province found that more than part tested positive for the virus in their stools.
“We used to think of SARS-CoV-2 as a lung or respiratory disease,” said Siew Chien Ng, vice dean of medicine and associate director of the university’s Center for Intestinal Microbiota Research on Tuesday. “But for more than two months, there is sufficient evidence that SARS-CoV-2 also affects the intestinal tract.
Ng and his clinical colleagues studied stool samples from 15 patients to more perceive the activity of the virus in the gastro-incheckinal tract and discovered an infection in the active checkup in seven of them, some of whom had no nausea, diarrhea or other digestive symptoms. ‘stool continued to test positive about a week after their respiratory samples were negative,’ Ng said. One patient is still positive after 30 days, he said.
Ng and his colleagues plan to conduct tests to show that debris from viral stool can cause disease after locating the biomarkers of choice that imply they are infectious.
It is not yet known how SARS-CoV-2 reaches the gastrointestinal tract to cause an infection, according to Ng. Some infectious remains could possibly reach the acidic environment of the stomach.
Treatments that modulate the gut microbiome should be explored, Ng said. Gut bacteria in patients with gastrointestinal coronavirus infection showed a loss of protective microbes and a proliferation of pathogenic microbes. The effects worsened in cases of COVID-19 treated with antibiotics, he said. On Monday, up to 2000 COVID-19 tests will be performed daily as a component of targeted detection of asymptomatic people.
More than one patient tested positive even though their respiratory samples were negative, said Francis K. L Chan, Dean of Medicine at the University and Director of the Center for Research on Gut Microbiota.
“Stool is accurate and safe, making them suitable and more effective at detecting COVID-19 in express teams of people,” Chan said in the statement. Some regulators, adding the U. S. Food and Drug Administration, have not been able to do so. U. S. , they’ve requested the faeces.
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