Coronavirus or gut issues? How to differentiate between the two

COVID comes with a number of symptoms, many of which are so common that it is difficult to distinguish the symptoms of the infection from another disease. The COVID causing coronavirus can affect a person's respiratory tract, initially and move on to affect other body organs. This is when people experience non-respiratory tract related symptoms.

Gastrointestinal symptoms or the symptoms related to gut illness is commonly seen in COVID. Symptoms like diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain which are the symptoms of a number of ailments are also common to COVID.

As per a study 1 in 5 people who had tested positive for COVID had atleast one gastrointestinal symptom like vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhea.

During the third wave of COVID, more reports of gastrointestinal symptoms came to the fore. While many linked stomach related issues to be a hallmark of the Omicron variant of the COVID, many others said, stomach issue was a potential indicator of the infection ever since the pandemic began.

"It's not that Omicron is necessarily causing more GI issues, but rather, that it's now easier to detect COVID-19 in those patients than it was earlier in the pandemic," says Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, an infectious diseases specialist in Mississauga, Ont. to a media outlet.

Dr Chakrabarti's statement is backed by a 2020 research study. The study found that , from among 18,246 patients, diarrhea was the most common gastrointestinal symptom, affecting 11.5% of the patients, followed by nausea and vomiting (6.3%) and abdominal pain (2.3%). With regard to clinical severity, 17.5% of the patients were classified as severely ill, whereas 9.8% of them were considered to have a non-severe disease, the study said.

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There are several research studies on how coronavirus can affect the gastrointestinal tract of an individual.

The COVID causing coronavirus receptor is the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) whose binding affinity for this virus is 10–20 times higher than that for the other viruses of this family. It is reported by many hospital cases and studies that ACE2 is abundantly expressed not only in lung alveolar type 2 cells and esophageal cells, but also on cells in gastrointestinal tract, including glandular cells of gastric, duodenal and rectal, absorptive enterocytes from the ileum and colon and hence these tissues are also susceptible to infection by the virus.

There are several ways one can distinguish the COVID induced stomach ache from other diseases.

In other health conditions, stomach ache is rarely accompanied with fever. However, in the case of COVID one definitely gets a fever.

If there is breathing problem or coughing and sneezing along with stomach pain, you should test yourself for COVID infection.

Stomach ache does not affect the sense of smell and taste in individuals. However, if you have COVID then it is likely that you may lose the sense of smell and taste for a few days.

Another clear indication that the stomachache is related to COVID is that in case of COVID the symptoms are more persistent than they are in other ailments.

The other telltale signs of COVID are fever, headache, fatigue, cough, sore throat, aches and pains.

If you experience signs like loss of speech or mobility, or confusion, chest pain, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath then contact your doctor immediately.