الفهرس 
Liver cirrhosisOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 133 |  |  |
| | | from | 133 | | |
Abstract
Zinc is an essential element for normal cell growth, development, and differentiation. The liver is important for the regulation of zinc homeostasis, while zinc is necessary for proper liver function. Decreased zinc levels have been implicated in both acute and chronic liver disease states, and zinc deficiency has been implicated in the pathogenesis of liver diseases. Studies suggested that zinc supplementation can improve the long-term outcome in viral chronic hepatitis and liver cell failure patients.
The present study aimed to evaluate the relationship between the serum zinc level and severity of liver cell failure and to study the effect of low dose zinc supplementation on the Severity of liver cell failure.
The study was conducted on 60 patients with histologically documented liver cirrhosis, as well as age and sex matched healthy volunteers who served as controls.
Patients were subjected to thorough history taking, thorough clinical examination and routine laboratory investigations. Serum Zinc level was measured in every subject. Every patient received 30 mg of Zinc/day for one month. Then, all patients were reevaluated regarding the clinical, laboratory and pathological data.
In the present study, patients had significantly impaired liver functions (ALT, AST, ALP, albumin, bilirubin and INR) when compared with controls. In addition patients had lower WBCs count, RBCs count, platelet count and lower hemoglobin level when compared with controls. Furthermore, zinc levels are significantly lower in patients when compared with controls.
In addition, our study found that there was a statistically significant direct correlation between zinc levels and both platelets count and albumin level. In addition, there was a statistically significant inverse correlation between zinc level and ALT, AST, total bilirubin, direct bilirubin, INR level and Child Pugh score.
In the present study, zinc supplementation resulted in significant improvement of serum ALT, AST, albumin, total bilirubin, direct bilirubin, INR and Child Pugh Score(table-5,8).