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Two weeks of treatment with 50 mg zinc twice daily does not reduce or eliminate persistent diarrhea in adults infected with HIV, according to a report by an international team of researchers.
Zinc supplementation has been shown to reduce the incidence and severity of diarrhea in children, the authors explain, but whether zinc improves persistent diarrhea among HIV-infected adults is unclear.
Dr. King K. Holmes from University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues investigated whether dietary zinc supplementation (50 mg twice daily for 2 weeks) influenced the persistence or severity of diarrhea in 159 HIV-infected adults in Peru with at least a 7-day history of diarrhea. The findings are reported in the October 1st issue of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.
The frequency of diarrhea was no less with zinc supplementation than with placebo treatment, the authors report. Other gastrointestinal symptoms and fever also occurred with similar frequency in the two groups.
"Longer treatment or follow-up beyond 2 weeks might have revealed treatment benefit," the investigators speculate. "Among children, however, benefits of zinc supplementation on diarrhea have been evident after the fourth day of supplementation."
"Future research on HIV-associated diarrhea in adults in developing countries should assess more potentially effective antimicrobial interventions to inform guidelines for empiric antimicrobial treatment algorithms," the authors conclude.
