Zinc deficiency is predominantly seen in children, particularly in developing countries. Deficiency of zinc plays a role in reduced immunity and increased risk of infection. Preventive supplementation of zinc in healthy children can decrease the mortality due to common causes like diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria. The main aim of this article was to evaluate the all-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality along with morbidity in children under five years of age in developing countries for preventive zinc supplementation.

A literature exploration was done on the Cochrane Library, PubMed and the WHO regional databases to recognize RCTs on supplementation of zinc in children greater than three months but less than 5 years of age. Also, its effect on mortality rate was analysed.

The effect of preventive zinc supplementation on mortality was documented in eight trials, whereas specific mortality data was reported in 5 out of these 8 trials. Supplementation of zinc was associated with an insignificant 9% reduction in all-cause mortality in the intervention group compared to the control group by a random effect model. The effect on diarrhea-specific mortality of zinc was 18% reduction and 15% reduction for pneumonia-specific mortality. The occurrence of diarrhea exhibited a 13% reduction with preventive zinc supplementation and a 19% reduction in morbidity of pneumonia. Thus, the supplementation of zinc in children is associated with a decrease in diarrhea mortality of 13% and pneumonia mortality of 15%. No effect was seen with preventive zinc supplementation on malaria specific mortality or prevalence of malaria.

Therefore, it is concluded that supplementation of zinc resulted in reduction in mortality from diarrhea and pneumonia.

Source: Yakoob MY, Theodoratou E, Jabeen A, et al. Preventive zinc supplementation in developing countries: impact on mortality and morbidity due to diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria. BMC Public Health. 2011;11 Suppl 3(Suppl 3):S23. Published 2011 Apr 13. doi:10.1186/1471-2458-11-S3-S23