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

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.