Figure 1.
Flowchart for study selection protocol in the present study.
*, Type of diarrhea was included as acute or persistent.
Table 1.
Published studies therapeutic use of zinc against in acute diarrhea.
Table 2.
Outcomes and summary effects related to acute diarrhea observed in published meta-analyses.
Table 3.
Outcomes and summary effects related to persistent diarrhea observed in published meta-analyses.
Figure 2.
Forest plot depicting the studies included in our meta-analysis for the outcome of mean diarrheal duration.
Orange squares and lines indicate the point and 95% confidence intervals for the standardized mean deviations (SMD) and the orange diamond denotes the point and confidence interval for the summary effect size. Suffixes a, b and c indicate specific zinc-treated subgroups within the indicated study. Weights are expressed in percentage.
Table 4.
Results of subgroup meta-analyses for the outcomes of mean diarrheal duration and risk of vomiting.
Figure 3.
Investigation of the potential contribution of continuous variables to heterogeneity across study results for the outcomes of mean diarrheal duration and risk of vomiting.
(A and B) Results from univariate meta-regression for continuous variables as predictors of the between-study heterogeneity for mean diarrheal duration (A) and risk of vomiting (B). The statistical significance is shown as log transformed p-value and the vertical dashed line corresponds to a p-value of 0.05. Blue dots, statistically insignificant; red dot, statistically significant. (C and D) Bubble plots showing the influence of the dose of elemental zinc as a predictor of the standardized mean difference of diarrheal duration (C) and log odds ratio of the risk of vomiting (D). Each bubble represents a study group listed in Figure 2 and the size of the bubble is proportional to the inverse-variance weights.
Figure 4.
Forest plot depicting the studies included in our meta-analysis for the outcome of risk of vomiting.
Red squares and lines indicate the point and 95% confidence intervals for the odds ratios (OR) and the red diamond denotes the point and confidence interval for the summary effect size. Suffixes a, b and c indicate specific zinc-treated subgroups within the indicated study. Weights are expressed in percentage.