Vitaminas y Minerales

Zinc and Lifestyle - Related Disease - with Focus on Diabetes Mellitus and Osteoporosis

Abstract

Yutaka Yoshikawa, Hiroki Murakami, Shigeyuki Fujimoto, Kanako Michigami, and Hiroyuki Yasui

In recent years, more people worldwide have suffered from diseases such as cancer, myocardial infarction, hypertension, osteoporosis, and diabetes mellitus. Diabetes mellitus and osteoporosis, well known as lifestyle-related diseases, have been considered serious problems in particular because full recovery is difficult. In 2007, the number of diabetes mellitus patients worldwide was reported to be approximately 200 million. Osteoporosis patients also amounted to approximately 200 million people worldwide. Against this background, many kinds of minerals have been used in the treatment and/or prevention of these lifestyle-related diseases. In particular, though the abundance of zinc in the body is very large, thus it is presumed to have a wide safety margin. Known as the second messenger, zinc has a wide variety of physiological functions, and attracts attention as an alternative to drug biological components. In this review, we outline the effect of zinc on the lifestyle-related diseases diabetes and osteoporosis.