Zinc for severe pneumonia in very young children: double-blind placebo-controlled trial.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Zinc in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Pneumonia is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in young children.

The researchers postulated that zinc, an acute phase reactant, would shorten duration of severe pneumonia and time in hospital.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 270 children taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as infants, both men and women.

Discharge was allowed when respiratory rate was 40 per minute or less for 24 consecutive hours while patients were maintained only on oral antibiotics.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled 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.

Neither the children nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Zinc, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Zinc could be set against what happens without it.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Anti-Bacterial Agents, Length of Stay, Oxygen, Pneumonia, Bacterial, Respiration and Zinc.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Zinc in 270 children.

Results are reported in around 4 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2004 (Lancet (London, England)), a journal based in England.

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