Zinc and Its Paradoxes Involving some Human Health Issues on Supplementation

This paper aims at echoing the health implications of zinc in humans to the scientific world in order to designing a proper means to streamlining its research. The paper looks at some important functions of zinc, some health risks of zinc deficiency and, the boons and ambiguities associated with zinc supplementation trials. Zinc supplementations have, among others, such important health benefits as; improving immune system functions, reducing the duration and severity of diarrhea in children, and of common cold, reducing the incidence of pneumonia and of HIV/AIDS infections, may reducing the incidence of clinical attacks of malaria in children. However, the optimum zinc doses and dosages for these health conditions have not been ascertained for supplementation due to lack of its sensitive nutritional status biomarker and or improper zinc study design. Zinc bioavailability is relatively high in meat, eggs and seafood because of the relative absence of compounds that inhibit its absorption and the presence of sulfur-containing amino acids like cysteine and methionine that improve its absorption. The future of zinc research is promising as it would help addressing such health challenges as malaria, tuberculosis, diabetes, blindness, sexual dysfunction, diarrhea, cancer and others when at the cutting edge. It is therefore suggested, inter alia, that a sensitive and specific biomarker should be holistically designed for zinc to help detecting marginal zinc deficiency in humans as this will streamline its associated health studies; more and well-designed randomized controlled trials of zinc supplementation should be conducted to determining optimum dosage, formulation and duration of treatment for a specific health condition.