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Abstract
Background: Measles pneumonia is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in children particularly in low resource areas. Traditional remedies though effective are sometimes not quick in recovery. Zinc supplementation has been suggested as a supplement therapy because it has got immune-modulatory and anti-inflammatory effects.
Purpose: The purpose of the research was to test the effectiveness of zinc supplement in the pneumonia management among children who had measles pneumonia at Fatima Hospital, Baqai Medical University, Karachi.
Methods: A randomized controlled trial was done on 30 children aged between 6 months and 10 years living with the diagnosis of measles pneumonia. Study sample was randomly grouped and either given zinc supplementation (sulfate form of zinc, 1mg/kg/day) or given placebo (sucrose and distilled water) in addition to the standard pneumonia care. The duration of pneumonia was the primary outcome, with time to resume normal body temperature, tachypnea, and general status of recovery as the secondary outcomes. The SPSS 29.0 version was used in the analysis of data.
Findings: The children in the zinc group had a much shorter period of pneumonia (5.42 days) than those in the placebo group (6.27 days, p = 0.03). The time to resolution of fever (2.53 days they took vs. 3.67 days they took, p = 0.02) and tachypnea (3.12 days they took vs. 4.01 days they took, p = 0.04) were also significantly less in the zinc group. In addition to this, 80 percent of the children in the zinc category recovered completely, as compared to 60 percent in the placebo group.
Inference: Zinc supplementation is very effective in decreasing the length of stay in pneumonia and creating better recovery outcomes to children with measles pneumonia. This observation indicates that zinc may serve as an adjunctive therapeutic intervention, especially in resource constraint facilities. One should conduct more studies to validate these findings with bigger, multi-centered studies.