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Zinc supplementation for the prevention of pneumonia in children aged 2 months to 59 months

Overview of attention for article published in Cochrane database of systematic reviews, December 2010
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Title
Zinc supplementation for the prevention of pneumonia in children aged 2 months to 59 months
Published in
Cochrane database of systematic reviews, December 2010
DOI 10.1002/14651858.cd005978.pub2
Pubmed ID
Authors

Lassi, Zohra S, Haider, Batool A, Bhutta, Zulfiqar A

Abstract

Pneumonia is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children younger than five years of age. Most deaths occur during infancy and in low-income countries. Daily regimens of zinc have been reported to prevent acute lower respiratory tract infection and reduce child mortality. To evaluate the effectiveness of zinc supplementation in the prevention of pneumonia in children aged two to 59 months. We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library 2010, Issue 2), which contains the Acute Respiratory Infections Group's Specialised Register, MEDLINE (1966 to January Week 2, 2010), EMBASE (1974 to January 2010) and LILACS (1985 to January 2010). Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating supplementation of zinc for the prevention of pneumonia in children aged 2 to 59 months of age. Two review authors independently assessed trial quality and extracted data. We included six trials and 7850 participants in the meta-analysis. Analysis showed that zinc supplementation reduced the incidence of pneumonia by 13% (risk ratio (RR) 0.87; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.81 to 0.94, fixed-effect, six studies) and prevalence of pneumonia by 41% (RR 0.59; 95% CI 0.35 to 0.99, random-effects, one study). On subgroup analysis, we found that zinc reduced the incidence of pneumonia defined by specific clinical criteria by 21% (i.e. confirmation by chest examination or chest radiograph) (RR 0.79; 95% CI 0.0.71 to 0.88, fixed-effect, four studies, n = 4591) but had no effect on lower specificity pneumonia case definition (i.e. age specific fast breathing with or without lower chest indrawing) (RR 0.95; 95% CI 0.86 to 1.06, fixed-effect, four studies, n = 3259). Zinc supplementation in children is associated with a reduction in the incidence and prevalence of pneumonia, the leading cause of death in children.

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The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 75 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Colombia 1 1%
Netherlands 1 1%
France 1 1%
United Kingdom 1 1%
Fiji 1 1%
Unknown 70 93%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 19 25%
Researcher 11 15%
Student > Bachelor 11 15%
Student > Postgraduate 8 11%
Other 7 9%
Other 12 16%
Unknown 7 9%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 42 56%
Nursing and Health Professions 7 9%
Social Sciences 5 7%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 3 4%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 2 3%
Other 8 11%
Unknown 8 11%