Monday, July 6, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a report on zinc supplements reducing the incidence of acute lower respiratory infections in children. Here are details of the study:

The authors theorized, "Because zinc deficiency results in impaired immune status, and zinc supplementation improves immune status, we hypothesized that zinc deficiency is associated with increased incidence and severity of acute lower respriratory infection."

For their study, conducted in India, they used 609 children, ranging in age from 6 months to 36 months. 298 of those children were given daily supplements (10 mg) of elemental zinc. The control group, which did not use the supplements, included 311 of the children.

Results show that after 120 days, the zinc-supplemented children had 24 episodes of acute lower respiratory infection (0.19/child/year), compared with 44 episodes (0.35/child/year) in the control group. This translated to a reduction of 45% in the incidence of acute lower respiratory infections with zinc supplemented children.

The authors concluded that improving zinc intake in developing countries will improve health and survival of children. They note that acute lower respiratory infections, predominantly pneumonia, are responsible for about 4 million deaths each year. Such infections account for one-third of all childhood deaths in developing countries.