Zinc Deficiency and Skin Disease

Abstract

In human medicine zinc was not believed to be essential until the discovery of endemic zinc deficiency in the Middle East in the early 1960s. In 1973–1974 the clinical picture of severe zinc deficiency in man was identified by the recognition of zinc deficiency underlying acrodermatitis enteropathica [1, 4]. The discovery supplied us with a key to recognize acquired zinc deficiency states. Thus, in 1976 a report on acquired zinc deficiency during total parenteral nutrition was published [3]. Since then more than 75 additional reports have appeared. The cause of the zinc depletion in these cases is lack of sufficient zinc with the fluids used for parenteral nutrition. The low zinc supply adds to a preexisting negative zinc balance which in most cases is caused by chronic inflammatory bowel diseases or extensive abdominal operations. A few years later chronic zinc deficiency was described in patients with liver cirrhosis due to chronic alcoholism, in sucrose malabsorption and adult celiac disease [5, 6].