Effect of oral zinc application during pregnancy.

The beneficial effects of the oral application of zinc aspartate in pregnancy is investigated in a randomly selected study group of 179 patients and a control group of 345 patients. This study confirms the prophylactic effectiveness of zinc replacement in reducing the overall complication rate for both mother and fetus and in particular for large-for-date and small-for-date infants. The therapy is well tolerated and accepted by the patients and causes no side effects. The results are in line with those of other working groups reporting on zinc as an important element with protective effects on fetal growth and development in pregnancy.