Although the coronavirus is primarily a respiratory disease, there is increasing evidence that suggests the GI tract is involved, scientists at the Chinese University of Hong Kong said.

The team studied samples from 100 patients treated at two Hong Kong hospitals to see how the so-called microbiome in the digestive system might affect recovery from the deadly bug.

“Gut microbiome composition was significantly altered in patients with COVID-19 compared with non-COVID-19 individuals irrespective of whether patients had received medication,” they wrote in the British Medical Journal’s publication Gut.