COVID-19 and Zinc

welcome to this video as always now i just learned something yesterday and the president trump apparently has been reported as he's taking this zinc a zinc supplement i thought that's interesting let's do a bit of background on that now i am convinced if you've watched this channel you'll know this that this stuff is going to be helpful as an immunoprotective and an immunomodulator in that people that are short of vitamin d can be immunocompromised but but what about zinc it's an interesting question now the thing about vitamin d and zinc i just happen to have got these from a particular supply again from the supermarket they're just general very cheap supplements and when i say very cheap the pharmaceutical manufacturers i guess they could make a thousand doses of each of these for about a dollar you know basically basically they're free so given that these medicines are generic well they're not medicines for supplements given that they're free then no one can make any significant money out of it because any reputable manufacturer can produce these literally by the ton so there's not a lot of vested interest in promoting this in terms of financial gain lots of money to be made from expensive vaccines lots of money to be made from expensive drugs from clever clocks treatments but you know what about the basic things anyway that's enough of me practicing on let's get straight down to the evidence so i thought okay president trump's taking that there's probably some evidence for it let's look at what it is and there is i mean i have been aware of zinc for a long time of course i mean um zinc is in quite a few over-the-counter cold remedies and there is evidence that people that are low on zinc are much more likely to get common colds um but let's stick to the uh the pandemic in hand at the moment so first study and i'm going to look at two studies today uh first study now the bottom line of this video by the way does seem to be very protective that's the bottom line but firstly those zinc levels at clinical admission associated with poor outcomes in covid 19. so this is from research from barcelona from the what we might call the first wave in spain now these are direct quotes from this paper zinc balances immune responses and also has a proven direct antiviral action against some viruses right now let's just notice the words there proven direct antiviral action against some viruses so this is a known antiviral mineral this is already known this is not something new and speculative and given that you've really got to wonder why there's been no randomized clinical trials organized on this it really is surprising but let's go on zinc deficiency is a common condition in elderly individuals with chronic disease so this is not unique and we'll see in spain it does the zinc levels in spain do seem to be quite low increased intracellulasing concentrations efficiently impair replication of the virus now here it's talking about the sarcoma virus ii virus the the covid19 virus so that they are here saying here that increased intra cellular that's inside the cells zinc concentration impairs viral replication which of course is exactly what we want we don't want this virus reproducing all over the place resulting in a lower number of viruses so just by way of background these are things that are really already known the the case is starting to get interesting isn't it now their study was retrospective which of course is not as good as a prospective study but it's what we've got uh patients admitted in barcelona in the first way 15th of march the 30 or 13th of april so about six week course of admissions and they assess the clinical severity of covered 19 and the past medical history of all these patients so they knew who they were dealing with now fasting plasma zinc levels measured routinely at admission so every patient who came in routinely had their fasting zinc levels recorded so this information was available it was recorded and it was recorded on 611 patients the mean age of whom was 63 years 55 of whom were male therefore 45 were female total mortality was 87 patients that's 14 during the time of the study but there's a problem once they started getting busy again uh they didn't have time to analyze all this data so they've only analyzed data from 249 of the 611 patients but they do feel this is a representative sample now you can understand that the doctors are busy and have to go back to treating sick people but why on earth a phd student from spain doesn't pick this up and run with this is just baffling let's hope you make this available because um it would be much better to get the data from 611 than than 249. uh some non-clinical researcher could easily process this information in perhaps just a few weeks let's hope that's done and we get an updated paper but of the 249 21 that's eight percent died now baseline zinc levels on admission died 21 people died in this group mean with the mean plasma zinc at 43 micrograms a deciliter so people who had an average zinc level on admission of 43 micrograms a deciliter 21 of those people died now amongst the survivors the people that survived their mean zinc level was 63.1 micrograms a liter so that was the average zinc level in the people that died that was the average zinc level in the people that survived so here we can see we have a pretty strong correlation this is a correlation can we say that it was the low zinc levels that made people more likely to die can we see it say it was the better zinc levels that made people more likely to survive absolutely we can't say that this is a correlation but it's a very interesting one and it's one which really needs studied because zinc could be rolled out to the world's population for essentially no cost the same as vitamin d to the world's population that currently needs immunoprotection high zinc levels associated with lower maximum levels of interleukin 6 during active infection so people that had higher levels of zinc higher levels of zinc they had lower levels of interleukin 6. now what is this well 6 is one of these cytokines that we've heard about one of the things that contributes to the cytokine storm and basically the higher the interleukin 6 the higher the inflammation so what this is saying is higher levels of zinc lower levels of inflammation which of course is exactly what we want so good levels of zinc associated with lower levels of inflammation which is the inflammation of course which causes the acute respiratory distress syndrome and many other problems zinc levels lower than 50 micrograms per deciliter that figure there is a mu so that's 50 it's micrograms like that with a long tail it's the greek letter mu but it means micro so this is micrograms we're talking about a deciliter of course is 100 mils of blood um zinc levels lower than 50. micrograms of desolated admission with 2.3 times at increased risk of inhospital deaths i mean wow you know given that we've got results like this and we're in the middle of a pandemic why aren't people around the world picking up on this running with it and planning clinical trials on it because this drug is essentially these medicines not medicines supplements they're basically free so what this said here was zinc levels lower than 50 yep zinc levels lower than 50 micrograms of desolator at emission 2.3 times increased risk of inhospital death compared to those with 50 micrograms per deciliter so so the people with lower levels of zinc below 50 2.3 times more likely to die sorry 2.3 times more likely to die than people with 50 micrograms a deciliter or higher now very often the difference is not as easy to see as this very often what people do is they'll take so here they've like divided it in half below 50 and above 50. below 50 more likely to die above 50 less likely to die zinc very often what people do is they'll take all of the ranges of zinc and divide it into quarters or anything whatever they're studying and say well the lowest quarter is more likely to die than the highest quarter but here it's a straight cut off in the middle indicating perhaps a more powerful effect interesting lower zinc levels at admission correlates with higher inflammation in the course of the infection and poorer outcomes direct quotas in italics direct quote from the paper low uh plasma zinc levels at admission are associated with mortality and confident 19 in our study they're more likely to die with lower zinc levels further studies are needed to assess the therapeutic action of this association so what they've done is that they've demonstrated this association it's a correlation study does this mean taking a zinc supplement is going to be prophylactic prevent someone from getting more severe inflammatory related covid19 disease is it going to mean they have a viral load is it going to be a good prophylactic we don't know the study hasn't studies haven't been done if people are admitted with covid19 and we give zinc at that stage is that going to act as a treatment reducing complications and reducing death don't know no one's bothered doing the study but if i had to guess it's looking promising isn't it now one more paper this is from chennai in india the city that used to be caught used to be called madras covered 19 poor outcomes in patients with zinc deficiency international journal of infectious diseases by the way this is um accepted peer-reviewed uh the first one has not yet been peer-reviewed but i've read it and it looks pretty good to me i'm pretty convinced actually otherwise i wouldn't be wasting my time with this video now this isn't even due to be published yet so it's in the november issue it's probably was actually published a few weeks ago as an electronic print a perspective study of fasting zinc levels in covert 19 patients at the time of hospitalization so very similar now they found healthy controls had a mean level of 105.8 micrograms of zinc per deciliter of blood now this is a lot higher than the spanish levels so were the spanish levels already low interesting so i wanted to check that so whenever i want to check a medical fact i get out my much used and trusted davidson's principles and practice of medicine and uh i hope we can see this so here we see the normal levels of zinc are 72 to 144 micrograms per deciliter now it's a bit confusing because this is the uh old-fashioned way of measuring it which both studies use this is the modern way uh the sr unit but given that both studies are using this we can see that the spanish levels were already actually quite low because they're the normal reference levels according to davidson so if anything this reinforces the results of the spanish study because their zinc levels were already relatively low anyway that's the data we got from india that they found the controls had 105 micrograms per deciliter you know i don't want to get too involved in the uh in the figures because it's high or low we're interested in really now the study in india the researchers say zinc is a trace element with potential immunoregulatory and antiviral properties so the indian doctors are completely agreeing with the spanish doctors but making it clear it's immunoregulatory now immunoregulatory immunomodulating while we know vitamin d does this we're now learning that zinc does this as well so it stops excess inflammation and presumably facilitates adequate inflammation which is necessary as part of the immune process so zinc important as that sort of immunoregulator uh is utilizing the treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 apparently according to the indian studies in india i don't know that it's being used in other countries but in india they seem to be using it therapeutically according to what they're saying there now we don't have evidence for that yet because the trials haven't been done but just reporting what the indian doctors are saying patients with serious serious covenant covered 19 had significantly lower zinc levels compared to healthy control so again they're saying more serious disease lower levels of zinc zinc deficiency covered patients developed more complications so the difference here is that um zinc deficient patient 17 in the patients that are deficient in zinc 70.4 develop complications in the patients that are not deficient of zinc 30 developed complications so big difference zinc zinc deficient patients 70 developing complications none zinc deficient patients developing 30 only 30 developed complications and the p value there is p equals 0.009 which means it's a very significant result the probability of that arising by chance is remarkably low um acute respiratory distress syndrome more common in people with low zinc more steroids required in people with low zinc and that makes sense because if you haven't got um the zinc acting as an immuno modulator the steroids can bring the inflammation levels down and increase mortality patients with lower levels of zinc more likely to die zinc deficient covered 19 patients had a prolonged stay in hospital zinc deficient patients it was 7.9 days non-zinc deficient patients 5.7 days again a significant result and the indian researchers point out that in vitro studies in experiments reducing levels increase sas coronavirus to virus receptor interactions so reduced zinc levels increase virus level and increase the interactions between the virus and the receptor now we know about this so if this is the spike of the virus and that's the receptor then the virus clicks into there to put the virus rna into the cell that it infects so if there's reduced levels of zinc that happens more easily higher levels of zinc that happens less easily so again good levels of zinc from this it would appear at preventing the spread of the virus from one cell to another increased zinc levels inhibit ace2 expression a2 are the receptors the virus binds into so again that will potentially reduce the ability of the virus to reproduce so interesting two pretty good correlation studies but i just wanted to do a quick review before we finish this video of what we already know so i went to the um national institutes of health website uh look it up for yourself what zinc does well it's catalytic activity of approximately 100 enzymes in other words it's necessary for the biochemistry of the cell plays a role in immune function in producing proteins in wound healing in producing dna for cell division and indeed in cell division itself it's needed for normal growth and development pregnancy childhood and adolescence and interesting it's also required for normal taste and smell well that one was interesting now zinc and immunity specifically zinc deficiency depresses immune function simply stated as factors this is a direct quote even mild to moderate degrees of zinc deficiency can impair macrophage and neutrophil function macrophages are what some of the white cells the neutrophils or others of the white cells needed for the immune response and also particularly zinc is necessary for the function of the natural killer cells which are very antiviral cells and also complement is another component of the immune system body requires zinc to develop and activate t lymphocytes now we've talked a lot about t lymphocytes these are completely essential in the response to sars coronavirus ii and the body requires zinc to develop and activate t lymphocytes this is already known low zinc levels have been shown to reduce lymphocyte proliferation so the lymphocytes again these antiviral cells and the proliferation means the way that they divide and increase in number if there's an infection and it also says this problem can be corrected with zinc supplementation so here we see the national institutes of health saying that these problems can be corrected with zinc supplementation if the zinc levels are low and other studies have said that low zinc levels are common you see what i'm saying this is actually quite profound stuff isn't it it's it's actually quite quite amazing this really low zinc status has been associated with increased susceptibility to pneumonia and other infections in children developing in developing countries and the elderly so there's some definite science in these groups anyway so where does zinc come from well not many of us eat oysters i've never tried one in my life other seafood probably hard to get but it's in beef pork baked beans fortified cereals pumpkin seeds yogurt cashew nuts chickpeas oats and almonds it's in all of those things and the supplement is essentially free to produce so president trump's taking extra zinc the science shows that low levels of zinc are correlated with more severe sars coronavirus 2 infection and correlated with more deaths what we don't know is if giving zinc will prevent people getting sick and what we don't know if giving zinc will help people recover when they are sick we can't say that because these are correlation studies so more clinical trials desperately needed but it would appear that the president and those advising him are sufficiently convinced of the efficacy of zinc to give the president additional zinc presumably in the form of a supplement and and if you're listening mr president i would love to know what uh what dose you're taking so with that thank you for watching this video as always

Channel: Dr. John Campbell

Views: 1,967,270

Keywords: disease, campbell, zinc, zinc deficiency, covid, covid-19, virus, coronavirus, pandemic, epidemic, death rate, prevention

Id: aIvRR_y5i-k

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2020