Nutritional Advice El Mondo
Objectives:
Previous trials have shown that zinc supplementation can decrease the risk of diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria in children; however, the effects of zinc supplementation on mortality remain unclear. Therefore, this review article has been conducted.
Does zinc supplementation reduce total mortality and cause-specific mortality in preschool children?
Study design:
This review article included 8 RCTs which included 87,854 children and reported 1,558 events of mortality. The population of the trials ranged from 96 to 42,546 and the follow-up for subjects ranged from 6 to 17.6 months.
Egger and Begg tests showed no evidence of publication bias for total mortality [p value for Egger = 0.207, p value for Begg = 0.902].
Results and conclusions:
The investigators found overall, zinc supplementation had no effect on:
total mortality [RR = 0.76, 95% CI = 0.56-1.04, p = 0.084];
diarrhea-related mortality [RR = 0.80, 95% CI = 0.53-1.20, p = 0.276];
pneumonia-related mortality [RR = 0.52, 95% CI = 0.11-2.39, p = 0.399];
malaria-related mortality [RR = 0.90, 95% CI = 0.77-1.06, p = 0.196] or;
other causes of mortality [RR = 0.98, 95% CI = 0.67-1.44, p = 0.917]. No effect because RR of 1 was found in the 95% CI of 0.67 to 1.44. RR of 1 means no risk/effect/association.
The investigators found subgroup analysis indicated that zinc supplementation was significantly associated with a reduction in total mortality risk if the participants were boys, aged greater than 12 months and the duration of the follow-up period was less than 12 months. Significant means, there is an association with a 95% confidence
The investigators concluded zinc supplementation reduces total mortality risk if the participants are boys, aged greater than 12 months and the duration of the follow-up period is less than 12 months.
Original title:
Effects of zinc supplementation on the incidence of mortality in preschool children: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials by Fu W, Ding LR, [...], Zhou YH.
Link:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3823854/
Additional information of El Mondo:
Find more information/studies on malnutrition and zinc right here.