Original ArticlesEfficacy of zinc-fortified oral rehydration solution in 6- to 35-month-old children with acute diarrhea☆,☆☆
Section snippets
Methods
The trial was carried out in the Nehru-Navjeevan slums of Govindpuri, Delhi. Incomes are low, half the mothers are literate, 50% of children under 5 years of age are stunted, and 20% are wasted.10
Results
The 3 groups were comparable for age, sex, anthropometry, preenrollment duration of diarrhea, breast-feeding status, and plasma zinc levels (Table I).Only stool frequency during preenrollment 24 hours differed significantly between the groups.
Plasma zinc was low (<60 μg/dL) in 33.7% of study subjects at baseline (Table I). The mean end-study plasma zinc concentration was higher in the zinc syrup group (difference in means 24.2 μg/dL, 95% CI 14.5 to 33.9) but not in the zinc-ORS group
Discussion
This study confirms the beneficial effect of zinc in the treatment of acute diarrhea when given as a syrup formulation, reported previously by others.2, 3, 4, 5, 6 The study clearly demonstrates that the addition of zinc to ORS does not affect its intake or cause vomiting in children with acute gastroenteritis. In the intention-to-treat analysis, zinc-ORS decreased total and watery stool frequency but not diarrheal duration compared with ORS alone. Furthermore, the nearly 40% reduction in the
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the contribution of Dr Kåre Mølbak in design and analysis and that of Mrs Kiran Bhatia in statistical analysis. We thank Dr S. P. Srivastava and others at the Indian Toxicology Research Center, Lucknow, India, for their help with the plasma zinc assays.
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Supported by NORAD under IND-040. Support to the Indo-Norwegian collaborative effort by NUFU (PRO 52-52/96) and core support to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences unit by the Indian Council of Medical Research is acknowledged.
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Reprint requests: Maharaj K. Bhan, MBBS, MD, Department of Pediatrics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi-110029, India.