kiwibird
Editor, Senior Moderator
Zinc helps children recover quicker from pneumonia
In addition to its effects in diarrhoea, zinc speeds up recovery from severe pneumonia in young children. A recent article by ICDDR,B scientist W. Abdullah Brooks and colleagues published in the Lancet | full text | shows that children taking elemental zinc (20 mg per day), plus the hospital?s standard antimicrobial management, recovered a day earlier than children who were not taking zinc. The effect seems to result from substantial reductions in the resolution times of each of the severe pneumonia indicators, including chest in-drawing, severely-raised respiration rate, and hypoxia. This indicates a consistency between specific signs and the diagnosis of severe pneumonia. It is believed that the effect of zinc in the treatment of pneumonia is due to its role in the acute-phase response mediated by cytokines.
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The paper concludes that adjuvant treatment with 20 mg zinc per day accelerates recovery from severe pneumonia in children, and could help reduce antimicrobial resistance by decreasing multiple antibiotic exposures, and lessen complications and deaths where second line drugs are unavailable.
Full Article: http://www.supportforlife.org/media...helps-children-recover-quicker-from-pneumonia
In addition to its effects in diarrhoea, zinc speeds up recovery from severe pneumonia in young children. A recent article by ICDDR,B scientist W. Abdullah Brooks and colleagues published in the Lancet | full text | shows that children taking elemental zinc (20 mg per day), plus the hospital?s standard antimicrobial management, recovered a day earlier than children who were not taking zinc. The effect seems to result from substantial reductions in the resolution times of each of the severe pneumonia indicators, including chest in-drawing, severely-raised respiration rate, and hypoxia. This indicates a consistency between specific signs and the diagnosis of severe pneumonia. It is believed that the effect of zinc in the treatment of pneumonia is due to its role in the acute-phase response mediated by cytokines.
...
The paper concludes that adjuvant treatment with 20 mg zinc per day accelerates recovery from severe pneumonia in children, and could help reduce antimicrobial resistance by decreasing multiple antibiotic exposures, and lessen complications and deaths where second line drugs are unavailable.
Full Article: http://www.supportforlife.org/media...helps-children-recover-quicker-from-pneumonia