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With great interest I read the review on oral zinc and the healing of leg ulcers by Wilkinson and Hawke.¹ I agree with their conclusion that there is limited evidence for using zinc internally unless the patient is truly zinc deficient. We and others have also shown delayed wound healing in animals on zinc-deficient diets.² The critical issue is to determine whether patients have zinc deficiency. More refined diagnostic criteria together with advanced analytic techniques are becoming available to assess the zinc status more accurately than a single serum zinc measurement.

Zinc is more commonly used as zinc oxide in various topical preparations to treat skin lesions.² In contrast to zinc given orally, zinc administered topically appears to be beneficial regardless of the patient's zinc status. When applied locally, zinc oxide is solubilized slowly, and supraphysiological concentrations of ionic zinc (an elevation of about 4-5 times) are achieved at the . . . [Full Text of this Article]