Zahra Akbari; Mohammad Shafie'ei; Nastaran Sarvipour; Mohadese Ahmadzade; Hamidreza Rouientan; Saeedeh Farajzadeh; Najmeh Ahramiyanpour
Abstract
Background: Among many coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)integumentary system involvements, alopecia is one of the leastinvestigated. This disorder has been reported in many individualswho have suffered from varying severities of COVID-19. Weaimed to systematically review studies evaluating the onset ...
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Background: Among many coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)integumentary system involvements, alopecia is one of the leastinvestigated. This disorder has been reported in many individualswho have suffered from varying severities of COVID-19. Weaimed to systematically review studies evaluating the onset ofdifferent types of alopecia following COVID-19.Methods: The PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Embasedatabases were searched with a specified string of relevantkeywords. After quality assessments, the data of eligible studieswere qualitatively and quantitatively synthesized.Results: Sixteen studies were included in our review, six ofwhich underwent meta-analysis for the differences in the risk ofalopecia between males and females. Though the disorder wasnot differentiated in all the cases, we found that COVID-19 wasassociated with several different types of alopecia, includingtelogen effluvium, alopecia areata, alopecia parvimaculata, andlichen planopilaris. Moreover, although statistically insignificant,the odds of developing alopecia favored the female population.Conclusion: Although many hypotheses have been suggested asto why an individual might be more predisposed to developingalopecia following COVID-19, the data obtained from the studiesyielded results that could not lead to definite conclusions. Therefore,we recommend that further studies be conducted to evaluatethe association between the two phenomena more confidently.