The Prevalence of Irritable Bowel Syndrome after Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Infection and Their Association: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies

Aim: Investigate the prevalence of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and assess the association between IBS and SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods: A systematic literature search for PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Scopus, and the Cochrane Library was performed to identify all reports published before 31 December 2022. The confidence interval (CI), estimation effect (ES) of prevalence, and risk ratios (RR) were calculated to evaluate the prevalence of IBS after SARS-CoV-2 infection and their association. Individual results were pooled by the random-effects (RE) model. Subgroup analyses conducted a further investigation of the results. We employed funnel plots, Egger's test, and Begg's test to evaluate publication bias. Sensitivity analysis was performed for the assessment of the robustness of the result. Results: The data on IBS prevalence after SARS-CoV-2 infection were extracted from two cross-sectional studies and ten longitudinal studies from nineteen countries with 3950 individuals. The IBS prevalence after SARS-CoV-2 infection ranges from 3% to 91% in different countries, and the overall pooled prevalence of IBS following SARS-CoV-2 infection is 15% (ES: 0.15; 95% CI, 0.11-0.20; p = 0.000). The data on the association between IBS and SARS-CoV-2 infection were extracted from six cohort studies from fifteen countries with 3595 individuals. The risk of IBS increased following SARS-CoV-2 infection but was not significant (RR: 1.82; 95% CI, 0.90-3.69; p = 0.096). Conclusions: In conclusion, the overall pooled prevalence of IBS following SARS-CoV-2 infection was 15%, and SARS-CoV-2 infection increased the overall risk of IBS but was not statistically significant. Further extra high-quality epidemiological evidence and studies to clarify the underlying mechanism of IBS following SARS-CoV-2 infection are needed.