Plasma zinc assay is the most commonly used bio-marker of zinc deficiency. This assay, however, is neither specific nor sensitive. In this paper we described a very specific and sensitive assay for zinc deficiency in human subjects. We developed a test in which gene expression of IL-2 is corrected by simple in vitro addition of physiological amounts of zinc to mononuclear cells isolated from the zinc deficient subjects. We believe that this test may be a very important bio-marker of human zinc deficiency.
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