New studies have started to notice that COVID-19 plays a role in our gastrointestinal and gut microbiome. A group of researchers from the university of Gadask in Poland looked into how COVID-19 could affect the gut microbiome. Due to the common symptoms of COVID-19, nausea, vomiting, or even diarrhea, this could have an impact on our gut microbiome. The researchers also looked at pharmacological treatments available which could also affect the diversity by creating loss of bacterial diversity, increase in opportunistic pathogens, and decrease of microbes. An alteration of gut microbiome in COVID-19 patients has led to an increase in the development of gut dysbiosis. Dysbiosis is where the bacterial colonies are out of balance, where one group of bacteria takes over another group of bacteria that were initially part of the original population. Individuals with dysbiosis, commonly see symptoms such as chest pain, fatigue, and diarrhea. The researchers also seem to notice that before the 35-day period, there seems to be COVID-19 that is found in feces. It is recommended that screening should be done past the two-week period of normal COVID-19 symptoms on a patient's gut microbiome so that we can see if any alterations are occurring. Another study found that there was an enrichment of fungal pathogens in which they came from the genera Candida and Aspergillus. It seems that COVID-19 can affect intestinal cells as well as intestinal microbiota.
Reading, D. (2020, November 06). COVID-19 - gastrointestinal and gut microbiota-related aspects. Retrieved November 15, 2020, from https://www.docwirenews.com/abstracts/covid-19-gastrointestinal-and-gut-microbiota-related-aspects-2/
I am so glad I came across this post! I was super curious as to why some symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhea began to appear since earlier in the year we recognized it as flu like symptoms. There is no doubt that Covid-19 research is happening exponentially fast and it will be interesting to read future discoveries as our generation is at the front end of it.
ReplyDeleteI came across a paper that talks about various prebiotic used to improve conditions in lung disease and how this can translate to patients effected by Covid-19. By profiling gut microbiota of the Covid-19 patients, specialized pre/probiotics such as FOS, GOS and lactobacilli strains can be supplemented to improve gut dysbiosis and overall immune response (Dhar & Mohanty, 2020). By doing so, the hope is to improve recovery in patients who are especially immune-compromised.
References:
Dhar, D., & Mohanty, A. (2020). Gut microbiota and Covid-19- possible link and implications. Virus research, 285, 198018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.virusres.2020.198018
This is a very interesting topic as I am doing my individual research on the gut microbiome in relation to Parkinson’s Disease. The gut microbiome is a very new field of study and there isn’t too much data on how the changes in the microbiome are cause. In other words, the data collected may be incorrect since it is known that various factors are involved in alteration to the gut microbiome. Some examples include dietary changes, molecules aspirated from the immediate environment, or even a common cold.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do agree with your statement on monitoring patients past the two-week period of covid-19 symptoms, I also think it’s unnecessary as various factors cause these alterations in the gut microbiome. As mentioned above, how do we know the observed changes in the biome are actually due to covid-19? We don’t and so I believe while it may be a good idea to do further research to understand the gut microbiome’s role in covid-19, it is also important to remember that there are a limited number of resources available to tackle covid-19. Conclusively, we don’t have the time to monitor patients for that long as two-weeks is already a significant period of time.
Cryan, J.F., O’Riordan, K.J., Sandhu, K., Peterson, V., Dinan, T.G. (2020). The gut microbiome in neurological disorders. THE LANCET Neurology, 19(2), 179-194. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(19)30356-