Zinc supplementation does not affect growth, morbidity, or motor development of US term breastfed infants at 4-10 mo of age.

Study answer

What this study found

Zinc supplementation did not improve growth, gross motor development, or morbidity in these healthy term breastfed infants. In the zinc group, mean weight gain was 348 +/- 75 g/mo and mean length gain was 1.48 +/- 0.15 cm/mo, but these outcomes did not differ significantly from placebo; attained weight and length at 10 months were also not significantly different. Gross motor development on the AIMS was not significantly different between groups, and incidence or prevalence of diarrhea, otitis media, respiratory illness, fever only, and total illness also did not differ significantly. Plasma…

Study & population

Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in healthy term breastfed infants in the United States.

Intervention

The active intervention was 5 mg elemental zinc daily as zinc sulfate, given orally as drops each morning from ages 4 to 10 months.

Key limitation

Primary analyses were based on a reduced active-arm sample rather than all randomized infants, and the biochemical subset was very small.

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Original abstract