(Press-News.org) A study led by Hans Verhoef, a researcher at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, and published in this week's PLoS Medicine shows that supplementing young Tanzanian children with zinc —either alone or in combination with other multi-nutrients — does not protect against malaria.
Zinc helps to maintain a healthy immune system, and previous studies had shown a benefit of zinc in reducing diarrhea. Most African children are deficient in zinc, and in this study the authors wanted to investigate a possible role for zinc supplementation in protecting against malaria.
The authors randomly assigned 612 children from a rural area of Tanzania aged between 6 months and 5 years to receive daily oral supplements containing zinc alone, multi-nutrients without zinc, multi-nutrients with zinc, or no micronutrients (placebo) and found that the incidence rate of malaria in all four intervention groups was very similar (about 3 episodes a year). None of the supplements had any effect on malaria rates when compared to the placebo, even though the occurrence of zinc deficiency was strongly reduced by zinc supplementation in the trial.
In a further analysis, the authors suggested that multi-nutrient supplementation might be harmful as it increased the risk of malaria in children with iron-deficiency.
The authors say: "Despite a high prevalence of zinc deficiency, excellent compliance, and few drop-outs, we found no evidence from this trial that preventive zinc supplementation, alone or with multi-nutrients, reduced rates of febrile attacks of malaria."
They add: "We have presented evidence that multi-nutrient supplementation may increase the risk of malaria in children with iron deficiency, strengthening earlier concerns about the safety of multi-nutrient supplementation in malaria-endemic areas, even in settings with good access to health care and appropriate treatment."
The authors conclude: "when results from all trials are considered together, there is no evidence that zinc interventions can reduce the burden of malaria in African children."
INFORMATION:
Funding: This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)/WOTRO [W93-413, WAO93-441], UNICEF, Cornelis Visser Foundation and Wageningen University (Interdisciplinary Research and Education Fund). HV is currently supported by the INSTAPA project, which receives funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007�) under grant agreement no. 211484. QuikRead tests and trimagnesium dicitrate were donated by Orion Diagnostica, Espoo, Finland and Jungbunzlauer, Ladenburg, Germany, respectively; supplements were manufactured and donated by Laboratory Medisan, Heerenveen, The Netherlands. The funders had no role in the design or conduct of the study, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, or in the preparation or approval of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: Veenemans J, Milligan P, Prentice AM, Schouten LRA, Inja N, et al. (2011) Effect of Supplementation with Zinc and Other Micronutrients on Malaria in Tanzanian Children: A Randomised Trial. PLoS Med 8(11): e1001125. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001125
CONTACT:
Hans Verhoef
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine/Wageningen University
Cell Biology and Immunology
P.O. Box 338
Wageningen, GLD 6700 AH
The Netherlands
+31 (0) 317-483922
hans.verhoef@wur.nl
END
In this week's PLoS Medicine, Mona Loutfy of the University of Toronto, Canada and colleagues report their study examining experiences of stigma and coping strategies among HIV-positive women in Ontario, Canada. Using focus groups, the researchers found that women attributed their experiences of stigma and discrimination to HIV-related stigma, sexism and gender discrimination, racism, homophobia and transphobia, and involvement in sex work. The coping strategies they used included resilience (at a micro level), social networks and support groups (at a meso level), and challenging ...
In this week's PLoS Medicine Taghi Yasamy from the WHO, Geneva, Switzerland and colleagues identify challenges facing good mental health research governance in low- and middle-income countries and provide suggestions for a way forward. The authors recognize the need to establish the general orientation of mental health research to deal with problems such as organizational structure, research prioritization and relatively limited capacity and resources, and to balance expensive research with assessment of services and resources using low-cost methods.
The authors state: ...
In the 19th century, Francis Galton noted that certain people who were otherwise normal "saw" every number or letter tinged with a particular color, even though it was written in black ink. For the past two decades researchers have been studying this phenomenon, which is called synesthesia. In an "Unsolved Mystery" article and accompanying podcast to be published November 22 in the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology, David Brang and VS Ramachandran strive to bring synesthesia into the broader fold of biology and to the scientific study of the arts through understanding ...
How does awareness influence information processing during decision making in the human brain? A new study led by Floris de Lange of the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University Nijmegen, offers new insight into this question, and is published November 22 in the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology.
When making a decision, we gather evidence for the different options and ultimately choose on the basis of the accumulated evidence. A fundamental question is whether
and how conscious awareness of the evidence changes this decision-making ...
DURHAM, N.C.— Surgery significantly improves short- and long-term outcomes in patients with heart failure caused by a bacterial infection known as endocarditis, according to Duke University Medical Center researchers.
"About 60 percent of patients with heart failure in endocarditis undergo surgery during initial hospitalization," says Duke cardiologist Andrew Wang, M.D., senior author of the study which appears today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. He believes that percentage should be higher. American College of Cardiology guidelines strongly recommend ...
For persons with cardiovascular disease or diabetes, urinary sodium excretion (a surrogate for salt intake) at higher levels or at lower levels compared to mid-range values was associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events (for higher levels) or cardiovascular death and hospitalization for congestive heart failure (for lower levels), according to a study in the November 23/30 issue of JAMA. Also, higher estimated urinary potassium excretion was associated with a reduced risk of stroke.
There is uncertainty regarding the optimal daily intake of sodium. Findings ...
CHICAGO – Among patients with infective endocarditis (an infection of the heart lining which may involve the heart valves) and heart failure, about two-thirds undergo valvular surgery, which is associated with a significant reduction in the risk of death in the hospital and at one year, according to a study in the November 23/30 issue of JAMA.
"Infective endocarditis is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. Several published studies have reported in-hospital mortality of 15 percent to 20 percent and l-year mortality of 40 percent. In the United States ...
Repeatedly taking slightly too much paracetamol over time can cause a dangerous overdose that is difficult to spot, but puts the person at danger of dying. Patients may not come to hospital reporting the overdose, but because they feel unwell. This clinical situation needs to be recognized and treated rapidly because these patients are at even greater danger than people who take single overdoses.
These so-called staggered overdoses can occur when people have pain and repeatedly take a little more paracetamol than they should. "They haven't taken the sort of single-moment, ...
Chapel Hill, NC – Researchers from UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center are part of a team that has identified a protein, called P-Rex1, that is key to the movement of cells called melanoblasts. When these cells experience uncontrolled growth, melanoma develops.
Melanoma is one of the only forms of cancer that is still on the rise and is one of the most common forms of cancer in young adults. The incidence of melanoma in women under age 30 has increased more than 50 percent since 1980. Metastases are the major cause of death from melanoma.
The team found that ...
OAKLAND, Calif., November 22, 2011 – HIV-infected patients are at increased risk for cancer as a result of both their impaired immune system and lifestyle factors, such as smoking, according to researchers at Kaiser Permanente.
The study, which appears in the current issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, is among the first to directly compare the risk of cancer in HIV-infected patients with a comparison group without HIV infection, while accounting for major cancer risk factors.
Of the 10 cancer types studied, six were more common in HIV patients, ...
