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Review
. 2023 Jun 10;15(6):e40231.
doi: 10.7759/cureus.40231. eCollection 2023 Jun.

Zinc Supplementation Associated With a Decrease in Mortality in COVID-19 Patients: A Meta-Analysis

Spencer Z Rheingold  1 , Chirag Raval  1 , Antonio M Gordon  2 , Patrick Hardigan  1
Affiliations
Review

Zinc Supplementation Associated With a Decrease in Mortality in COVID-19 Patients: A Meta-Analysis

Spencer Z Rheingold et al. Cureus. .

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the world, resulting in millions of deaths worldwide and imposing economic, political, and social problems. The use of nutritional supplementation for the prevention and mitigation of COVID-19 remains controversial. This meta-analysis aims to investigate the association between zinc supplementation, mortality, and symptomatology, among COVID-19-infected patients. A meta-analysis was conducted to compare the outcomes of mortality and symptomology of patients with COVID-19 receiving zinc supplementation and those not receiving zinc supplementation. PubMed/Medline, Cochrane, Web of Science, and CINAHL Complete were independently searched with the search terms "zinc" AND "covid" OR "sars-cov-2" "COVID-19" OR "coronavirus". After duplicates were removed, 1215 articles were identified. Five of these studies were used to assess mortality outcomes, and two were used to assess symptomatology outcomes. The meta-analysis was conducted through R 4.2.1 software (R Foundation, Vienna, Austria). Heterogeneity was evaluated by calculating the I2 index. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were used. It was found that COVID-19-infected individuals treated with zinc supplements had a reduced risk of mortality compared with individuals not treated with a zinc supplement RR=0.63 (95%CI;0.52,0.77), p=0.005. For symptomology, it was found that COVID-19-infected individuals treated with zinc had no difference in symptomology than individuals not treated with a zinc supplement RR=0.52 (95%CI;0.00,24315.42), p=0.578. This data indicates that zinc supplementation is associated with decreased mortality in those with COVID-19 but does not change symptomatology. This is promising as zinc is widely available and may be valuable as a cost-effective way to prevent poor outcomes for those with COVID-19.

Keywords: coronavirus; covid; covid 19; covid 19 mortality; covid and zinc; sars cov 2; sars-cov-2; supplementation; zinc; zinc supplementation.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Search strategy flowchart for meta-analysis literature search
Figure 2
Figure 2. Forest plot for the risk difference of mortality for COVID-19 infected patients between patients treated with zinc vs. control patients not treated with zinc
Figure 3
Figure 3. Forest plot for the risk difference in symptomology for COVID-19 infected patients between patients treated with zinc vs. control patients not treated with zinc
Figure 4
Figure 4. Risk of bias traffic light plot
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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