Minerals

The Incredible Zinc Study

6. November 2022 3 min read

How zinc supplementation restores immune function in aging: a groundbreaking study reveals why just 10 mg can dramatically improve IL-2 production and immunity in elderly individuals.

Zinc is a remarkable trace element. After iron, it's the most abundant mineral in the body.

Zinc is critically important because it enables the interaction of many transcription factors and hormone receptors with DNA by stabilizing the DNA binding. In other words, for your thyroid hormone to work, it must be able to interact with DNA. This interaction functions seamlessly only with zinc. That makes sense. With insufficient zinc, you simply get less hormone activity.

Zinc works against cancer in this same way. One of our most important anti-tumor proteins, p53, contains what's called a zinc finger—a loop in the protein where zinc is bound, allowing it to interact with DNA (see above). This means p53 can only function when sufficient zinc is available. In every second tumor, p53 is mutated and largely ineffective. Studies have shown for many years that extra zinc can restore function to this mutated p53. Remarkable, really. (Note: this is not a treatment recommendation!)

Quite recently, an equally remarkable study from the medical faculty of RWTH Aachen was published. RWTH Aachen is considered one of Germany's best universities. So it's important to pay close attention. And naturally, these are exactly the kinds of universities that produce the best results. Now it gets interesting.

The researchers were interested in the well-known decline in immune function in elderly people. It seemed reasonable that zinc might be involved—this connection has been documented for many decades. And indeed, they found that elderly people, averaging around 85 years old, frequently have zinc deficiency, with a prevalence of approximately 70%. Mind you: this exists on a spectrum. The zinc decline can be marginal and creeps up insidiously over many years due to poor absorption and other factors. Deficiency is the endpoint.

But the researchers didn't just speculate or estimate—they measured. Specifically, they measured concrete markers of immune function. They selected one of the most important growth factors for T cells, our immune system's specialized unit against cancer, viruses, etc.—namely Interleukin-2 (IL-2). They proved: low zinc is causally responsible for low IL-2 values. And low IL-2 values mean the immune system can't engage its turbo mode when needed.

And here's how the researchers confirmed it: they show that with low zinc, a transcription factor called CREMα becomes overactive, and it inhibits IL-2 production. The elderly subjects were then supplemented with zinc—just 10 mg—and within less than a week, their CREMα values normalized (decreased) and their IL-2 values consequently rose dramatically. In fact, they rose to levels the researchers had also measured in young people.

Just like that. Through zinc. 10 mg.

Low zinc, and specifically the resulting low IL-2, "predisposes older individuals to various age-related diseases and contributes to their increased overall mortality," as the authors state.

The researchers made several additional important points in their paper:

Among the young control subjects, only one person was classified as zinc-deficient—unusual, but "possibly reflecting his low zinc intake due to a vegan diet, as this dietary pattern is known to lead to micronutrient deficiencies." This outlier skewed the statistics; without this vegan subject, the findings would have been even more compelling. We'll leave that observation without comment.
Zinc-deficient elderly individuals spent on average almost three times as long in the hospital as those with adequate zinc.
This is corroborated by newer data showing that elderly COVID-19 patients with suboptimal zinc status remain hospitalized significantly longer than control subjects with better zinc status.
High zinc doses could suppress IL-2, however, so the authors conclude it's better to take lower doses over a longer period.

The authors note that it would be clinically significant to determine zinc status upon hospital admission and supplement accordingly if a deficiency is present.

The researchers wish that in the future there would be more, larger studies with more subjects on this topic. Unfortunately, this may be difficult going forward because "new regulatory publications have appeared recommending not taking more than 6.5 mg of zinc as a dietary supplement beyond normal diet," which may make it difficult to obtain approval for such a study.

Only the faintest hint of this appears in the study. But for anyone who can read just a little bit between the lines, it becomes clear why regulatory restrictions increasingly hinder important research:

Misguided ideology makes people sicker.
We have plenty of time, energy, and resources to push such things.
Truly important findings, like this one, are consistently ignored or even discredited.
Lawmakers invest considerable effort in further restricting access to simple and effective solutions. (6.5 mg zinc in a supplement?!)
And the truly vulnerable among us—elderly people, for instance—fall by the wayside.

You can only shake your head.

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