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. 2022 Nov 20;14(22):4918. doi: 10.3390/nu14224918

Table 2.

Excess intake of zinc leads to anemia.

  • 1. 

    Type of excess intake

References
a. Excess and prolonged intake of oral zinc supplement [69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79]
b. High-dose one-time zinc administration (for Wilson’s disease) [80]
c. Use of denture cream (containing a high zinc concentration of 17,000–34,000 (µg/g) [81,82,83]
d. Ingestion of coins (by individual with mental disease) [70,84]
  • 2. 

    High zinc levels induce copper deficiency

(High zinc induces metallothionein, zinc and copper compete to bind metallothionein, and copper is preferentially bound by metallothionein) [14,72,85,86,87,88,89,90]
(another suggested mechanism is that high zinc in the intestinal lumen directly interfered with the transport of copper across the mucosal cells) [91,92,93]
  • 3. 

    Mechanism of copper deficiency leads to anemia

(Copper is essential for normal hematopoiesis) [74,96,97]