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And a Wall Street Journal report indicates the critical importance of this mineral for the survival of Covid-19 patients.
Spanish researchers said, in a study published last month, that Covid-19 patients who died in hospitals during the last months of March and April had average zinc levels of 43 micrograms per deciliter. For those who managed to survive, the average was 63.
And the normal rate of zinc in the human body is 70, and with the calculation of age, sex and the severity of the disease, it turns out that the higher the level of zinc in the blood, the lower the probability of death in 7 percent for Corona patients.
The scientists said, in a recent article in the “Journal of Medical Virology,” that zinc may also have an antiviral effect because it can inhibit RNA viruses, including corona viruses.
In general, zinc plays an essential role in the metabolism and functioning of the immune system, and numerous studies over the years have found that people who have low levels of zinc are more likely to develop diseases such as pneumonia, diabetes, disease kidney and chronic fatigue.
The “National Institutes of Health” of the US Department of Health say that severe zinc deficiency “impairs immune function” and recommends the use of nutritional supplements that contain it.
And older people tend to have low levels of it, for the most important reason that their diets may not contain foods that have an adequate percentage of zinc, such as red meat, which is one of the most important sources of this important mineral, but they generally avoid it because of its association with heart disease.
Whole grains, beans, and nuts also contain zinc, but they also contain acids that prevent absorption, as do calcium supplements. People with diabetes, kidney disease, and ulcerative colitis also have a low absorption rate.
Oregon State University notes that dietary zinc deficiency is very common in the developing world, affecting approximately 2 billion people, for reasons including a lack of animal-based foods.
An earlier study followed patients in Massachusetts from 1998 to 2001 who had received nutritional supplements that contained 50 percent of the recommended amount of zinc.
It turns out that patients who had normal levels at the start of the trial were 40 percent less likely to die from any cause.
The incidence of pneumonia was 50 percent lower for patients whose zinc levels were normal at the end of the study.
The research indicated that “severe zinc deficiency can weaken immunity and increase exposure to infectious diseases, which is a leading cause of death among the elderly.”
