“…Thus, numerous animal and human studies indicate that zinc deficiency decreases resistance to infectious diseases. Zincdeficient animals have suppressed immune responses and are more susceptible to a diverse range of infectious agents, including Herpes simplex virus (Feiler et al, 1982) and Semliki forest virus (Singh et al, 1992), bacteria such as Francisella tularensis (Pekarek et al, 1977), Listeria monocytogenes (Carlomagno et al, 1986;Coghlan et al, 1988), Salmonella enteritidis (Kidd et al, 1994), and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (McMurray et al, 1990), the protozoan parasites Trypanosoma cruzi (Fraker et al, 1982), Trypanosoma musculi (Lee et al, 1983), Toxoplasma gondii (Tasçi et al, 1995), and Plasmodium yoelii (Shankar et al, 1995), eukaryotes such as Candida albicans (Salvin et al, 1987;Singh et al, 1992), and the helminths Heligmosomoides polygyrus (Minkus et al, 1992;Shi et al, 2010), Strongyloides ratti (Fenwick et al, 1990), Trichinella spiralis (Fenwick et al, 1990), Fasciola hepatica (Flagstad et al, 1972), and Schistosoma mansoni (Nawar et al, 1992). In summary, zinc deficiency affects cells involved in innate and adaptive immunity at the level of survival, proliferation, and maturation and increases host sensitivity to bacterial, viral, and fungal infections.…”