prevalence of covid-19 in children with gastrointestinal manifestations: a cross-sectional study of 184 cases in 2020 - 2021

Background: the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic has affected human life for more than a year. covid-19 is well known for its respiratory manifestations; however, other important symptoms help with its diagnosis. although clinical presentations in adults have been understood, clinical data in pediatric covid-19 cases are still lacking. objectives: we investigated gastrointestinal (gi) manifestations of covid-19 in pediatric cases. methods: this study included 184 cases with gi manifestations referred to the pediatric emergency department of namazi hospital from 20 march to 20 november 2020. their clinical and laboratory data were extracted and analyzed with spss22. results: of 184 patients, 51 had positive sars-cov-2 pcr results. the most common symptom in sars-cov-2-positive patients was vomiting in 22 (43%) patients, followed by watery diarrhea in 12 (23.5%) and dysentery in 11 (21%). significantly elevated crp (p value = 0.002), esr (p value < 0.001), and lymphocyte count (p value = 0.037) were found in pcr-positive patients. conclusions: our result demonstrates that covid-19 could present with different gi symptoms. also, the symptoms and lab data could help clinicians diagnose covid-19, besides other differential diagnoses in pediatric patients with gi symptoms.