Prevalence of Zinc Deficiency in Healthy 1-3-Year-Old Children from Three Western European Countries.

Mirjam Vreugdenhil,Marjolijn D Akkermans,Liandré F Van Der Merwe,Ruurd M Van Elburg,Johannes B Van Goudoever,Frank Brus

doi:10.3390/nu13113713

Abstract

Zinc deficiency (ZnD) has adverse health consequences such as stunted growth. Since young children have an increased risk of developing ZnD, it is important to determine its prevalence and associated factors in this population. However, only a few studies have reported on ZnD prevalence in young children from Western high-income countries. This study evaluated ZnD prevalence and associated factors, including dietary Zn intake, in healthy 1–3-year-old children from Western European, high-income countries. ZnD was defined as serum Zn concentration <9.9 µmol/L. A total of 278 children were included with a median age of 1.7 years (Q1–Q3: 1.2–2.3). The median Zn concentration was 11.0 µmol/L (Q1–Q3: 9.0–12.2), and ZnD prevalence was 31.3%. No significant differences were observed in the socio-economic characteristics between children with and without ZnD. Dietary Zn intake was not associated with ZnD. ZnD is common in healthy 1–3-year-old children from Western European countries. However, the use of currently available cut-off values defining ZnD in young children has its limitations since these are largely based on reference values in older children. Moreover, these values were not evaluated in relation to health consequences, warranting further research.

Highlights

Zinc is an important trace element for human health, as it is involved in numerous and diverse biological processes throughout the body, including cell growth and differentiation, gene expression, and protein synthesis [1,2,3]
278 of the 325 (85.5%) healthy 1–3-year-old children of the original nutritional intervention study were included for our Zn analyses: 237 (85.3%) in Germany, 37 (13.3%)
This study showed that zinc deficiency (ZnD), with a prevalence rate of 31.3%, is common in healthy

Summary

Introduction

Zinc is an important trace element for human health, as it is involved in numerous and diverse biological processes throughout the body, including cell growth and differentiation, gene expression, and protein synthesis [1,2,3]. In low- and middle-income countries, varying prevalence rates of ZnD have been reported in infants, young children, and preschool-age children, ranging from 5.1% in Sri Lanka to 82.6% in Cameroon [11]. A few studies report on the prevalence rates of ZnD in healthy young children from Western high-income countries, ranging from 0–60% [12,13,14,15,16,17]. Most of these studies were conducted some time ago, while dietary habits in Western countries may have changed over the years. In most of these studies, study populations were relatively small, and associated factors were not extensively assessed

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