鋅可以減輕孩童腹瀉的症狀

一項最近推出的計畫説明透過攝取含鋅的膳食補充品可以減少兒童嚴重腹瀉。

一個非營利事業的組織---Vitamin Angels(維生素天使)，在營養補充品工業有”人道主義之手”之稱，打算在其擴大版圖至全世界之前，在非洲肯亞發行一個人道主義專案。在其組織的一個提案中，將在肯亞的Sauri、Dertu和Eldoret三個城市提供鋅補充劑給有腹瀉的五歲以下兒童。

腹瀉是一個常見的症狀，在美國每年有240萬次的看診量。然而，年齡小於五歲的孩童還有年長者則會因為腹瀉引起的脫水而衍生出嚴重的健康問題。此症狀往往會由於營養不良而導致免疫系統缺乏某些重要微量元素而死亡。鋅是在人體中最豐富的微量元素之一，僅排名在鐵之後。它傳導許多物理功能並被認為是一個維護健康的免疫系統元素。

Vitamin Angels的創辦人表示: 鋅的研究是令人深思的。在口服補液治療(Oral Rehydration Therapy)中添加鋅，其成效會增加高達90%。口服補液治療降低嬰兒和孩童由腹瀉造成的死亡率是歷年來一項很重大的突破。

在最近一期的兒科期刊發表了鋅為腹瀉帶來的好處，表示鋅營養補充品可以降低兒童腹瀉的機會(18%)。

另外，在台灣的中國醫藥大學指出一種普遍受歡迎的香料---薑，在草本營養補充品的功能上可以針對細菌感染所引起的腹瀉有預防的能力。

New project to curb children’s diarrhea with zinc

A new program launched this week aims to help reduce severe diarrhea in children via dietary supplementation with zinc.

The humanitarian project, which will begin in Kenya before expanding worldwide, is being coordinated by Vitamin Angels, a non-profit group that has come to be known as the humanitarian arm of the supplements industry.

Part of the group’s Thrive to Five initiative, the zinc program will deliver zinc supplements to children affected with diarrhea under the age of five in Kenya’s Sauri, Dertu and Eldoret.

Industry sponsors include Novus International, an animal feed firm that recently expanded its scope into the human supplement, food and beverage ingredient market.

Diarrhea is a common condition that causes an average of 2.4 million doctor's visits in the US each year. However, children younger than the age of five and the elderly can develop severe health problems if diarrhea leads to dehydration. And the condition often leads to the death of children affected by malnutrition, whose immune system lacks certain essential micronutrients.

Zinc is one of the most plentiful trace elements in the body, second only to iron. It mediates many physiological functions and is believed to be essential for maintaining a healthy immune system.

"The research on zinc is quite compelling," said Howard Schiffer, founder of Vitamin Angels. "When added to an Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) regimen, zinc will increase the effectiveness by up to 90 percent. ORT was a huge breakthrough in the past few decades in reducing infant and child mortality rates caused by diarrhea."

Nutrition and diarrhea 營養和腹瀉

One of the most recent papers on the benefits of zinc for diarrhea was published last year in the journal Pediatrics (February 2008, doi:10.1542/peds.2007-0921). This found that zinc supplements could reduce the risk of getting diarrhea in children by around 18 percent.

The paper, which was a meta-analysis of 22 studies involving 17,000 children, also found that zinc supplements could reduce duration of diarrhea by around 15 percent.

Other nutritional appraoches to curbing diarrhea have also been examined of late. For example, a study published in the open access journal BMC Microbiology found that supplements of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG probiotic bacteria could protect against gastro-intestinal infection and diarrhea in infants.

The study was conducted in animals and showed that 59 per cent of animal subjects did not develop rotaviral diarrhoea when the probiotic was administered before infection with rotavirus.

In addition, researchers from Taiwan's China Medical University reported that the popular spice ginger has potential as a herbal supplement against bacteria-induced diarrhoea.

The researchers considered the effects of ginger and its bioactive components for their ability to inhibit the binding of a toxin from the bacteria E. coli (heat-labile enterotoxin, LT) to specific receptors on cells in a mouse intestine (GM1 receptors) that initiate a cascade of events resulting in diarrhoea (Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, doi: 10.1021/jf071460f).

Reaching children

The Vitamin Angels zinc program will be launched on Friday during the group’s 2009 Celebration of Angels Event at the Natural Products Expo East tradeshow in Boston.

Schiffer explained that the target population of the initiative are "the children who are not being reached by anyone else in rural Kenya".

"These children are part of the Millennium Villages projects in Dertu and Sauri where we will be providing enough zinc for 25,000 children. Initially we will be distributing about 250,000 zinc tablets," he told NutraIngredients-USA.com.

The initial project in Kenya is being designed to be scaled up to become a global initiative, he said.

生資有限公司摘譯/by Amy