Zinc treatment ameliorates diarrhea and intestinal inflammation in undernourished rats

BMC Gastroenterology

Research Article

Richard L Guerrant¹  Cibele BM de Carvalho²  Said Gonçalves C Fonseca³  Karoline S Aragão⁴  Ronaldo A Ribeiro⁴  Aldo Ângelo M Lima⁴  Sean R Moore⁵  Ítalo L Figueiredo⁶  Priscila B Frota⁶  Camila AA de Queiroz⁶  Carlos Emanuel C Magalhães⁶  Reinaldo B Oriá⁷ 

[1] Center for Global Health, Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA;Department of Microbiology and Institute of Biomedicine, School of Medicine, Federal University of Ceara, Rua Cel. Nunes de Melo, 1315, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil;Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Odontology, and Nursing, Federal University of Ceara, Rua Capitão Francisco Pedro, 1210, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil;Department of Physiology and Pharmacology and Institute of Biomedicine, School of Medicine, Federal University of Ceara, Rua Cel. Nunes de Melo, 1315, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil;Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, & Nutrition, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA;Laboratory of the Biology of Tissue Healing, Ontogeny and Nutrition, Department of Morphology and Institute of Biomedicine, School of Medicine, Federal University of Ceara, Rua Cel. Nunes de Melo, 1315, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil;Laboratory of the Biology of Tissue Healing, Ontogeny and Nutrition, Department of Morphology and Institute of Biomedicine, School of Medicine, Federal University of Ceara, Rua Cel. Nunes de Melo, 1315, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil;Department of Physiology and Pharmacology and Institute of Biomedicine, School of Medicine, Federal University of Ceara, Rua Cel. Nunes de Melo, 1315, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil;

关键词: Zinc;    Malnutrition;    Diarrhea;    Inflammation;    Bacterial translocation;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-230X-14-136

 received in 2014-03-13, accepted in 2014-07-28,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundWHO guidelines recommend zinc supplementation as a key adjunct therapy for childhood diarrhea in developing countries, however zinc’s anti-diarrheal effects remain only partially understood. Recently, it has been recognized that low-grade inflammation may influence stunting. In this study, we examined whether oral zinc supplementation could improve weight, intestinal inflammation, and diarrhea in undernourished weanling rats.MethodsRats were undernourished using a northeastern Brazil regional diet (RBD) for two weeks, followed by oral gavage with a saturated lactose solution (30 g/kg) in the last 7 days to induce osmotic diarrhea. Animals were checked for diarrhea daily after lactose intake. Blood was drawn in order to measure serum zinc levels by atomic absorption spectroscopy. Rats were euthanized to harvest jejunal tissue for histology and cytokine profiles by ELISA. In a subset of animals, spleen samples were harvested under aseptic conditions to quantify bacterial translocation.ResultsOral zinc supplementation increased serum zinc levels following lactose-induced osmotic diarrhea. In undernourished rats, zinc improved weight gain following osmotic diarrhea and significantly reduced diarrheal scores by the third day of lactose intake (p < 0.05), with improved jejunum histology (p < 0.0001). Zinc supplementation diminished bacterial translocation only in lactose-challenged undernourished rats (p = 0.03) compared with the untreated challenged controls and reduced intestinal IL-1β and TNF-α cytokines to control levels.ConclusionAltogether our findings provide novel mechanisms of zinc action in the setting of diarrhea and undernutrition and support the use of zinc to prevent the vicious cycle of malnutrition and diarrhea.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© de Queiroz et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.