Dietary Zinc Intake and All-Cause and Cardiovascular Mortality in Korean Middle-Aged and Older Adults

We aimed to investigate the association between dietary zinc intake and total deaths, cancer, and cardiovascular disease death. In this prospective, 10-year, community-based cohort analysis, data from 143,050 adult participants (aged 40 years and older) were analyzed. Dietary zinc intake at baseline was assessed using a food frequency questionnaire. Harrell’s C-index was used to determine the optimal cut-off of dietary zinc intake with the log-rank test. Using the Cox proportional hazards regression models, the association between dietary zinc intake and all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular disease mortality was estimated using hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals. During the mean 10.1 years of follow-up, 5436 participants expired, of whom 2355 died due to cancer and 985 died due to cardiovascular causes. After adjustment for confounders, dietary zinc intake was inversely associated with all-cause mortality (≤5.60 mg/day vs. >7.98 mg/day; hazard ratio, 1.13; 95% confidence interval, 1.01−1.25) and cardiovascular disease mortality (≤5.12 mg/day vs. >7.28 mg/day; hazard ratio, 1.42; 95% confidence interval, 1.11−1.81) but not with cancer mortality (≤5.60 mg/day vs. >10.08 mg/day; hazard ratio, 1.09; 95% confidence interval, 0.90−1.33). Dietary zinc intake was associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease mortality but not with cancer mortality. Our findings could suggest that recommending optimal dietary zinc intake is helpful for human health.