Effect of Zinc Supplementation on Morbidity due to Acute Diarrhoea in Infants and Children in Sanaa, Yemen

Object ives: to study the imp act of zinc administra tio n on the morbidity and mort ality attrib ute d to diarrhoea amongchild ren less than .5 years old . methods: the study design was a randomized double blind ed con trolle d clinical trial, held at elsabeenhospital for maternity and childhood, sana'a, yemen. the study was conducted during th e period september 200.5 to october 2006on 180 children less than g years old with ac ute dia rrhoeal ep isodes. they were randomly allocated to two groups; one of them receiveda placebo and the ot her receive d zinc acetate syrup for 14 days. both gro ups were followed up for 2 months. results: zinc was able todecrease the mean number of diarrh oeal ep isodes: 1.39 in th e inte rven tion gro up vers us 2.59 in the control group. it also reduced th emean freq ue ncy of stools per day in eac h attack (3..57 in the intervention gro up vers us .5.4 7 in the con trol group) and the volume ofstool in each attack during th e follow-up pe riod. moreover. zinc was sig nificantly mor e palatab le. conclusio n: we can co nclude fromthe study that administ ration of zi nc for two weeks during ac ute diarrhoeal episo des could decrease the incide nce o f fur the r diarrhoeal episodes as well as the sever ity of these episodes . the lower rat es of child mor bidi ty with zin c treatm ent re presen t substantialbenefits from a simple an d inexpensive int er vent ion th at can be inco rpo rated in exis ting efforts to control diarrhoea l disease.