COVID-19 lockdown can have led to waning immunity to gastrointestinal viruses

Following the primary stay-at-home orders issued within the U.S. to curb the spread of COVID-19, gastrointestinal viruses corresponding to norovirus, rotavirus and adenovirus all but disappeared from California communities, and remained at very low levels for nearly 2 years. The research is published within the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

Interestingly, these viruses surged back to pre-pandemic levels in late 2022, said Niaz Banaei, M.D., professor of Pathology and Medicine (Infectious Diseases), Stanford University, and Medical Director of Clinical Microbiology Laboratory, Stanford Health Care. “Adenovirus F40/41, the adenovirus strains most incessantly related to gastroenteritis, actually jumped to levels two-fold higher than pre-pandemic levels.”

Banaei suspects that the surge in viral infections was enabled by the waning of collective community immunity from lack of exposure in the course of the pandemic. “Something similar has been described for the surge in respiratory syncytial virus infections in 2022,” he said.

To discover changes within the prevalence of gastrointestinal pathogens, the investigators compared detection rates for community acquired gastrointestinal pathogens before, during and after California’s COVID-related shelter-in-place. To that end, they used a polymerase chain response (PCR) panel test called the BioFire FilmArray GI panel, which tests for 22 of probably the most common pathogens that cause diarrhea and analyzed about 18,000 tests that were taken from January 2018 to December 2022.

The motivation for the research was the change in the speed of positives for certain pathogens in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Banaei.

It immediately became clear that the pandemic lockdown and shelter-in-place had created a natural experiment to research the transmission dynamics of pathogens causing gastroenteritis.”

Niaz Banaei, M.D, Professor of Pathology and Medicine (Infectious Diseases), Stanford University

The research offers a novel window into the biology of gastrointestinal pathogens, raising some latest research questions, said Banaei. “Why did some disappear while others persevered unaffected during lockdown? Why are some now surging to levels we’ve not seen before?” Improved understanding of those phenomena may lead to ways to interrupt pathogens’ spread, particularly in low- to middle-income countries where gastroenteritis stays a serious explanation for illness and death, especially amongst children. “It can also help us prepare for future unexpected pandemics.”

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