Clinical Characteristics of Egyptian Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases Infected with COVID 19: Tertiary Center Experience from Egypt

Abstract

During COVID 19 pandemic, inflammatory bowel disease patients were significantly worried about being at a higher risk of getting COVID 19 infection, the effect of their medications on the course of infection and the expected prognosis. This is a retrospective cohort study done in Our Inflammatory bowel disease unit, Tropical Medicine Department, Ain Shams University Hospitals, Cairo, Egypt. We retrospectively reviewed all our patients infected with COVID 19 (13 patients) during the period from March 2020 till mid-September 2020. Thirteen patients in our unit were infected with COVID 19. The mean age of infected patients was 39.92 ± 11.16 years. Most of them were females 11 (84.6%). Most of them had ulcerative colitis (61.5%) and only 38.5% had crohn's disease. Only six patients were admitted to isolation hospital, all of them were ulcerative colitis. The most common presenting symptoms were fever (84.6%), cough (76.9%) and diarrhea (61.5%). Three of ulcerative colitis patients encountered disease exacerbation. All our infected patients had a good prognosis regarding their inflammatory bowel disease and COVID 19 course. COVID-19 infection in inflammatory bowel disease patients may carry a favorable outcome despite the vulnerability of those patients.