The Benefits of Zinc on Prevention and Lowering Severity of COVID-19
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Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a public health crisis that affects the human quality of life and the economy of all countries. Health promotion, especially encouraging healthy food consumption to enhance the immune system during COVID-19 pandemic is strongly suggested. Zinc is one of the essential elements for human physiological functions. One of the zinc benefits is to promote immune function. This article aimed to review and present the data from the updated pieces of literature in the scope of zinc and immune system function, as well as lowering severity symptom and improving clinical status of COVID-19 patients. The results found that serum zinc is one of the parameters used to predict COVID-19 severity and disease progression among COVID-19 patients. COVID-19 patients with low serum zinc are at risk of severe acute respiratory symptom development and mortality than those with normal serum zinc. In addition, previous studies indicated that zinc supplement is beneficial to support immune function which tends to prevent COVID-19 infection and improve clinical status among COVID-19 patients. However, further investigation on zinc intake and clinical outcome of COVID-19 is required due to this infectious disease is an emerging disease.
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