Trial reportJournal of global health2018
Zinc as an adjunct therapy in the management of severe pneumonia among Gambian children: randomized controlled trial.
Trial report in Journal of global health, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 27 citations in OpenAlex.
- Emergency care interventions for paediatric severe acute respiratory infections in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review and narrative synthesis.Journal of global health · 2023Pooled it
- The Role of Nutrition in COVID-19 Susceptibility and Severity of Disease: A Systematic Review.The Journal of nutrition · 2021Pooled it
- Efficacy of zinc as adjunctive pneumonia treatment in children aged 2 to 60 months in low-income and middle-income countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMJ paediatrics open · 2020Pooled it
- The Role of Zinc Against Bacterial Infections in Neonates, Children, and Adults: A Scoping Review from the Available Evidence of Randomized Controlled Trials About Zinc Supplementation to New Research Opportunities.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Article
- Cohort Profile: Basse Health and Demographic Surveillance System, the Gambia.International journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Exploring mothers' and grandmothers' perceptions of animal-source complementary foods in the diets of young children in The Gambia: A qualitative study.Wellcome open research · 2025Article
- Natural Ingredients to Improve Immunity.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Zinc in Human Health and Infectious Diseases.Biomolecules · 2022Review
- Review of the role of additional treatments including oseltamivir, oral steroids, macrolides, and vitamin supplementation for children with severe pneumonia in low- and middle-income countries.Journal of global health · 2022Review
- Zinc against COVID-19? Symptom surveillance and deficiency risk groups.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2021Review
- The Role of Micronutrients in Support of the Immune Response against Viral Infections.Nutrients · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
22 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe benefit of zinc as an adjunct therapy for severe pneumonia is not established. We assessed the benefit of adjunct zinc therapy for severe pneumonia in children and determined whether the study children were zinc deficient.
methodsThis was a randomized, parallel group, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial with an allocation ratio of 1:1 conducted in children with severe pneumonia to evaluate the efficacy of daily zinc as an adjunct treatment in preventing 'treatment failure' (presence of any sign of severe pneumonia) on day-5 and day-10 and in reducing the time to resolution of signs of severe pneumonia. Six hundred and four children 2-59 months of age presenting with severe pneumonia at six urban and rural health care facilities in The Gambia were individually randomised to receive placebo (n = 301) or zinc (n = 303) for seven days. To determine if the study children were zinc deficient, supplementation was continued in a randomly selected subgroup of 121 children from each arm for six months post-enrolment, and height-gain, nutritional status, plasma zinc concentrations, and immune competence were compared.
resultsPercentage of treatment failure were similar in placebo and zinc arms both on day 5 (14.0% vs 14.1%) and day 10 (5.2% vs 5.9%). The time to recovery from lower chest wall indrawing and sternal retraction was longer in the placebo compared to zinc arm (24.4 vs 23.0 hours;
conclusionsIn this population, zinc given as an adjunct treatment for severe pneumonia showed no benefit in treatment failure rates, or clinically important benefit in time to recovery from respiratory symptoms and showed marginal benefit in rapidity of resolution of some signs of severity. This finding does not support routine use of zinc as an adjunct treatment in severe pneumonia in generally zinc replete children.
trial registrationISRCTN33548493.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.