A little zinc can go a long way toward helping kids with pneumonia. Worldwide, the lung infection is a scourge of the very young, killing nearly 2 million children under the age of 5 every year, most of them in developing countries. According to a study in last week's Lancet, a 20-mg spoonful of zinc syrup might bring these numbers down.
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The role of zinc in treating bacterial and viral infections has been controversial. In theory, it should help. Zinc is essential for the growth and activity of infection-fighting cells called T-lymphocytes. When zinc is given to people with low zinc levels, the number of these infection-fighters in the blood goes up. But for colds in normal people, without zinc deficiencies, studies have gone both ways. One study by the Cleveland Clinic indicated that zinc lozenges, given to people with colds, shortened the length of the cold. But other studies of zinc supplements in 400 cold sufferers showed no effect.
There does seem to be an effect in pneumonia-riddled children. In a hospital in Bangladesh, researchers studied 270 kids under the age of 2 who were suffering from the disease. All of the children were given standard antibiotics. But in addition, half were given 20-mg of zinc syrup daily, and half were given a placebo. The zinc group had a shorter course of severe pneumonia, and returned to normal breathing patterns more quickly. On average, they got out of the hospital one day sooner than the placebo group.
Another important difference is that antibiotics failed more often in the children on placebo. So they had to be switched to a different drug. Using multiple antibiotics is a recipe for creating drug-resistant infections, says W. Abdullah Brooks, one of the researchers. Since zinc supplements avoided this problem, they could provide a striking benefit, he notes. Plus, zinc tablets cost less: 15 cents—much less than a day in the hospital.
