Gastrointestinal manifestations in patients with COVID-19 infection

We are currently facing a major threat to public health, with a significant impact on people's lives, destabilizing societies with a high mortality rate and weakening the economy worldwide. The disease was named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). As a new infectious disease, it is extremely important to discover its clinical characteristics, especially in the initial stage, in order to help detect and isolate patients earlier and to reduce the spread of the infection. We performed a systematic literature review based on an online search in the PubMed on Jun/13/2020, 19 records were analyzed, 13954 patients were identified. This study aims to review and investigate the characteristics of gastrointestinal symptoms in patients with COVID-19, raise awareness of health professionals and facilitate early recognition as well as appropriate treatment, avoiding the spreading of the disease. In this study, we found that many of the hospitalized patients with the COVID-19 infection had at least one gastrointestinal symptom. Patients with gastrointestinal symptoms like abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting or anorexia deserve special attention, and it is extremely important to understand the nuances of clinical characteristics and prognosis among patients with and without these symptoms.