Are Italy and Iran really suffering from COVID-19 epidemic? A controversial study

Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci. 2020 Apr;24(8):4519-4522. doi: 10.26355/eurrev_202004_21034.

Abstract

The number of global COVID-19 infected cases is increased rapidly to exceed 370 thousand. COVID-19 is transmitted between humans through direct contact and touching dirty surfaces. This paper aims to find the similarity between DNA sequences of COVID-19 in different countries, and to compare these sequences with three different diseases [HIV, Hand-Foot-Mouth disease (HFMD), and Cryptococcus]. The study used pairwise distance, maximum likelihood tree, and similarity between amino acid to find the results. The results showed that different three main types of viruses namely, COVID-19 are found. The virus in both Italy and Iran is not similar to COVID-19 in China and USA. While, two viruses were spread in Wuhan (before and after December 26, 2019). Besides Cryptococcus and HFMD are found as dominant diseases with Group 1 and Group 3, respectively. Authors claim that the current virus in Italy and Iran that killed thousands of people is not COVID-19 based on the available data.

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Betacoronavirus / classification*
  • COVID-19
  • Coronavirus Infections / epidemiology*
  • Coronavirus Infections / virology
  • Cryptococcus neoformans
  • Enterovirus
  • HIV
  • Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease
  • Humans
  • Iran / epidemiology
  • Italy / epidemiology
  • Pandemics
  • Pneumonia, Viral / epidemiology*
  • Pneumonia, Viral / virology
  • SARS-CoV-2
  • Sequence Alignment
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA