A new study suggests people who have recovered from COVID-19—even if they had mild cases—are at risk of future digestive diseases.
As COVID-19 cases continue to rise, an increasing number of people are experiencing digestive diseases. Recent research has revealed that COVID-19 infection increases the long-term risk of digestive diseases, with a notable rise even in mild cases.
A large-scale retrospective cohort study published in the BMC Medicine journal on Jan. 10 indicated that individuals previously infected with COVID-19 have a higher risk of developing digestive diseases.
The researchers included data on over 840,000 people from the UK Biobank database, categorizing them into groups: those who had been infected with COVID-19, a control group without infection during the same period, and a pre-pandemic control group using data from 2017 to 2019.
The results revealed that people who had previously been infected with COVID-19 faced a higher risk of digestive diseases compared to those who had not been diagnosed with COVID-19 during the same period. This included a 38 percent increase in the risk of gastrointestinal dysfunction, a 23 percent increase in the risk of peptic ulcer disease, a 41 percent increase in the risk of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), a 21 percent increase in the risk of gallbladder disease, a 35 percent increase in the risk of severe liver disease, a 27 percent increase in the risk of nonalcoholic liver disease, and a 36 percent increase in the risk of pancreatic disease.
Additionally, the risk of GERD exhibited a stepwise increase with the severity of COVID-19 symptoms. Even one year after infection, the risks of GERD and gastrointestinal dysfunction continued to rise, with increases of 64 percent and 35 percent, respectively.
The researchers also conducted a subgroup analysis of the risk of digestive diseases among individuals with a single infection and those with a reinfection of COVID-19. The results revealed that, compared to the noninfected population, the group with reinfections had about a 440 percent increased risk of pancreatic diseases, while the group with a single infection faced a 44 percent increased risk.
By Ellen Wan
