Gastrointestinal Health of People Working From Home Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Online, Cross-sectional Survey.

CONTEXT

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an increasingly sedentary lifestyle among people working from home (WFH), including 71% of Information and Technology (IT) workers. The lifestyle lacks physical activity and also affects people emotionally, which can lead to serious ailments.

OBJECTIVE

The study aimed to identify and understand the burden from gastrointestinal complaints on individuals in the IT sector, who have been working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown.

DESIGN

The researcher designed an online, cross-sectional survey, which was prepared on Google Forms.

SETTING

The study was conducted in Dr. D. Y. Patil Homoeopathic Medical College and Research Centre, Pune, India.

PARTICIPANTS

Participants were 101 WFH workers in the IT sector in the Maharashtra state of India.

OUTCOME MEASURE

The survey comprised a set of 28 questions on gastrointestinal health. The responses were analyzed to understand the types of gastric troubles that respondents had experience. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data.

RESULTS

The study included 101 responses for analysis. Most respondents were from 26 to 30 years of age (47.5%). Gender was not identified as an affecting variable. The author did not find any correlation between the variables. Of the 101 respondents, 49 (48.5%) of respondents had experienced gastric troubles since working from home in lockdown.

CONCLUSIONS

The complaints of the current study's respondents suggest an incidence of diseases after lockdown, such as acid peptic disease, first degree hemorrhoids, fissure in ano, gastritis, and irritable bowel syndrome. Together with physical ailments, many people have had a varied mental symptomatology that can be likely to give rise to psychosomatic diseases.