Zinc absorption and exchangeable zinc pool sizes in breast-fed infants fed meat or cereal as first complementary food.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Zinc.

The aims of this study were to compare the absorption efficiency of zinc from rice cereal and meat, with and without human milk, in 7-month-old breast-fed infants and to compare the size of exchangeable zinc pools in the infants according to the assigned complementary food.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as infants, men only.

The effect on fractional absorption of the addition of human milk to each complementary food was measured in each infant with a second oral zinc isotope.

Fractional absorption was measured using fecal monitoring of isotope excretion, and exchangeable zinc pool size was calculated from isotopic enrichment in urine.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

Because people in this Zinc study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Fractional absorption of zinc was measured in male infants using extrinsic labeling with a stable isotope of zinc in a test meal of either pureed beef (n = 9) or iron-fortified infant rice cereal (n = 9).

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Biological Availability, Breast Feeding, Cross-Sectional Studies, Edible Grain, Feces, Homeostasis and Infant Food.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Zinc.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 6 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2002 (Journal of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition), a journal based in United States.

More context: the related Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc library page, all human trials.