The presence of neocoronavirus infection will greatly increase the chances of severe and critical illness if it coincides with an underlying condition such as hypertension, obesity, or diabetes mellitus. Recent studies have shown that if patients with neocoronavirus pneumonia develop gastrointestinal symptoms, the probability of severe and critical illness will also increase. Recently, Prof. Lan Ping’s team at the Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University published an original research paper on the gastrointestinal symptoms of novel coronaviruses in “Gastrointestinal Symptoms in Neocoronavirus Pneumonia Patients Hospitalized Outside of Wuhan” in Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, a subseries of The Lancet. This multicenter retrospective study was conducted by Zhongshan Sixth Hospital, the Institute of Gastroenterology of Sun Yat-sen University, and a number of hospitals and research institutes across China. Data collected on 232 cases 21% developed diarrhea symptoms The viral pneumonia COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 infection has exceeded 2 million cases worldwide and continues to rise. Although the name of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus is pneumonia, the receptor for the virus is expressed in almost all tissues throughout the body, with particularly high expression in the gastrointestinal tract, and thus the group members were concerned about the gastrointestinal symptoms of the virus during the early stages of the epidemic. Some of the initial single-center and multicenter studies reported that patients infected with C. neoformans rarely had gastrointestinal symptoms. Ignoring gastrointestinal symptoms would have potentially prevented the diagnosis of some of these patients and exacerbated the risk of fecal-oral transmission of the virus. With this in mind, the team partnered with several hospitals in Hubei, Guangdong and Jiangxi to collect the medical records of 232 anonymized neoguan patients. In the study, it was found that 21 percent of neocoronavirus-infected patients developed diarrhea symptoms during hospitalization, significantly higher than the 3 percent originally reported. It was also found that many patients with neocoronavirus infection had symptoms of bloody stools. These results support the mechanism of neocoronavirus transmission via the GI tract. Presence of Gastrointestinal Symptoms May Help Predict Whether Respiratory Impairment Will Occur More importantly, the study found that diarrheal symptoms were also significantly associated with neocoronavirus infection severity, ventilator use, and ICU unit use. These findings, which exclude confounding factors, suggest that gastrointestinal symptoms of new crown infection can be used to predict whether a patient with a new crown infection will develop severe respiratory impairment, and help to design a more rational treatment plan for the patient. The findings also have important implications for the rational use of healthcare resources. In view of the medical value of the article, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet sub-journal expressed the hope that the article could be published as early as possible for the benefit of patients on the third day after the submission of the article. Dr. Wan Yunle, Chief Physician of the hospital, was the first author of the paper, and Dr. Zou Yifeng, Associate Chief Physician, Dr. Zhu Lixin, Postdoctoral Fellow Jiao Na, and PhD students Li Yichen and Cheng Sijing also made important contributions to this work. Prof. Lan Ping of the Department of Colorectal and Anal Surgery of Zhongshan Sixth Hospital is the corresponding author. Source: Southern Metropolis Daily