Systematic Reviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Virol. Dec 15, 2020; 9(5): 79-90
Published online Dec 15, 2020. doi: 10.5501/wjv.v9.i5.79
Reinfection risk of novel coronavirus (COVID-19): A systematic ‎review of current evidence
SeyedAhmad SeyedAlinaghi, Shahram Oliaei, Shaghayegh Kianzad, Amir Masoud Afsahi, Mehrzad MohsseniPour, Alireza Barzegary, Pegah Mirzapour, Farzane Behnezhad, Tayebeh Noori, Esmaeil Mehraeen, Omid Dadras, Fabricio Voltarelli, Jean-Marc Sabatier
SeyedAhmad SeyedAlinaghi, Mehrzad MohsseniPour, Pegah Mirzapour, Iranian Research Center for HIV/AIDS, Iranian Institute for Reduction of High Risk Behaviors, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 1586489615, Iran
Shahram Oliaei, HBOT Research Center, Golestan Hospital, Islamic Republic of Iran, Navy and AJA Medical University, Tehran ‎7134845794‎, Iran
Shaghayegh Kianzad, School of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran ‎7134845794‎, Iran
Amir Masoud Afsahi, Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), California, CA 587652458, United States
Alireza Barzegary, School of Medicine, Islamic Azad University, Tehran ‎7134845794‎, Iran
Farzane Behnezhad, Department of Virology, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran ‎7134845794‎, Iran
Tayebeh Noori, Department of Health Information Technology, Zabol University of Medical Sciences, Zabol 5486952364, Iran
Esmaeil Mehraeen, Department of Health Information Technology, Khalkhal University of Medical Sciences, Khalkhal 1419733141, Iran
Omid Dadras, Department of Global Health and Socioepidemiology, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto 215789652, Japan
Fabricio Voltarelli, Graduation Program of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Federal University of Mato Grosso, Cuiabá 458796523, Brazil
Jean-Marc Sabatier, Université Aix-Marseille, Institutde Neuro-physiopathologie (INP), UMR 7051, Faculté de ‎Pharmacie, 27 Bd Jean Moulin, Marseille 546789235, France
Author contributions: Mehraeen E and SeyedAlinaghi S conceived and designed the study; Afsahi AM and Behnezhad F acquired the data; Kianzad S, Oliaei S, and Barzegary A analyzed and interpreted the data; Mehraeen E and Noori T drafted the article; SeyedAlinaghi S, MohsseniPour M, and Mirzapour P critically revised the manuscript for important intellectual content; Dadras O, Voltarelli F, and Sabatier JM completed final approval of the version to be submitted.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors confirm that they have no conflict of interest.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Esmaeil Mehraeen, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Health Information Technology, Khalkhal University of Medical Sciences, Azizi, Khalkhal 1419733141, Iran. es.mehraeen@gmail.com
Received: September 2, 2020
Peer-review started: September 2, 2020
First decision: September 21, 2020
Revised: September 23, 2020
Accepted: November 19, 2020
Article in press: November 19, 2020
Published online: December 15, 2020
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Due to the high rate of transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (CoVID-19), a large number of people around the world became infected with the virus. There is evidence of reinfection with this virus. Therefore, people who get the disease once may be reinfected after reCoVery. Further investigation of reinfection by CoVID-19 is one of the necessities for better management of current conditions.

Research motivation

There have been reports of reCoVered individuals who have a second positive coronary test. This has raised concerns that there is no guarantee that the body will be safe after corona disease, even in the short term.

Research objectives

The aim of the present study was to investigate the available evidence of reinfection in patients with CoVID-19 who have reCoVered.

Research methods

This is a review study of different research types. Since there are myriads of publications released each and every day, with each trying to shed light on this pandemic from different perspectives, we aimed to summarize the very recent and of course the most trustworthy studies regarding the possibility of reinfection of CoVID-19 in this review in order to provide health care professionals and researchers imminent access to a multitude of these studies via a concise resource to save their invaluable time for other yet to do tasks.

Research results

The results have shown that there is a slight chance of reinfection. Though the duration of immunity is still unknown and needs to be determined; there is no guarantee that infected patients will not be infected again according to our results. These reinfections can be related to immunity system problems in cases of immunosuppressive disease or drugs that can misdirect our results, but there were many cases that got reinfected without any sign of the problems mentioned above.

Research conclusions

Based on the available evidence, reinfection in improved patients has been proven. Still, there is not enough data to definitely distinguish reinfection, reactivation, or infection with a new mutated severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. So, further studies are necessary to understand if a CoVID-19 recurrence is possible and whether it could be considered a real threat.

Research perspectives

We strongly suggest further studies to follow up discharged CoVID-19 patients, check their course of symptoms periodically, and analyze related antibody levels; widespread virological studies are necessary to understand better this new global predicament.