Gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms could be initial symptoms in patients suspected of COVID-19. Therefore, our aim was to report prevalence of GI manifestation in COVID-19 patients and to investigate their potential association with clinical outcomes.

In this study, we included 1113 inpatients (≥18 years old) with COVID-19 diagnosed between March to June, 2020 in Khorshid hospital. We extracted demographic, clinical characteristics, vital signs, laboratory data, treatment, and clinical outcomes (discharged and Death) from patients’ medical records and compared between patients with and without Gi symptoms.

demographic and clinical characteristics of 1113 patients with COVID-19 provided in, among which 612 (56.8%) patients presented with at least one GI symptom. The mean duration of symptoms was 8.0 (±6.5%) days. we found that the patients with digestive symptoms had a variety of GI manifestation including nausea 387 (34.7%), diarrhea 286 (25.7%), vomiting 260 (23.4%), and abdominal pain 168 (15.0%). Among the patients, the average hospital stay was 6.8 (±6.1) days. Additionally, 1026 (92.2%) patients were discharged, 95 (8.5%) patients were died and 164 (14.7%) patients were ICU admission which were significant between two group (P= 0.002, 0.009, 0.003).

In this study, COVID-19 shows a male predominance, but GI symptoms of this disease are more to be present in female patients. The results supported our finding that GI symptoms in COVID-19 are common but are not associated with the severity of disease