•  
  •  
 

Subject Area

Chest medicine

Article Type

Original Study

Abstract

Background Zinc performs an important part in maintaining proper immune function, and its deficiency has been connected to an increased risk of severe respiratory infections. However, there is limited data on serum zinc concentrations in children suffering from complicated community-acquired pneumonia (cCAP), particularly within the Egyptian pediatric population. Objectives This study aimed to evaluate serum zinc levels in children diagnosed with severe cCAP in comparison to healthy controls and to assess the diagnostic effectiveness of serum zinc levels in distinguishing children with cCAP. Methods This study included 100 children with severe cCAP and 100 age- and sex-matched healthy controls enrolled over a 12-month period. Serum zinc levels were measured at admission. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was conducted to evaluate the diagnostic performance of serum zinc levels. Results Median serum zinc levels were significantly lower in the cCAP group [63 (22–374) μg/dL] compared to controls [153 (27–862) μg/dL] (p ≤ 0.001). ROC analysis indicated promising diagnostic accuracy, reporting an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.80 (95% CI: 0.75–0.87). The optimal cut-off level was identified at 126 μg/dL, which demonstrated a sensitivity of 82% and a specificity of 61%. Conclusion Children with severe cCAP have substantially lower serum zinc levels compared to healthy peers. Serum zinc demonstrated good diagnostic accuracy, suggesting its potential utility as a supportive biomarker for early identification and risk stratification of severe pneumonia. Further multicenter studies are needed to validate these results and investigate the potential benefits of zinc supplementation in this population.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Download

Share

COinS