How might microencapsulation improve the absorption of Zinc?
Zinc is an essential nutrient in humans and all animals and serves many functions in the biological processes. Zinc is known to prevent Cardio Vascular disease through the role it plays in reduction of inflammation. It has been long known that zinc is extremely important in immune responsiveness. It does so through the role it plays in over 200 enzymes that are found as a component in the body. Its role in maintaining cell integrity enhances the wound healing process, maintains healthier cells and prevents invasion of bacteria and other pathogens.
Zinc has been popular with chelated mineral companies because zinc deficient subjects do exist and zinc supplementation does show improvement in things like health, reproduction and subsequently production efficiency. The chelated or complex mineral companies usually state that chelated minerals are more biologically available than their inorganic counterparts. This may or may not be the case. Zinc is transported across the gut via transport proteins, thus it is chelated to transport proteins for absorption. It is transported in the blood stream bound to protein as well.
There are various factors that can increase or decrease the absorptive efficiency of zinc. Anything that has the potential to increase the absorptive efficiency of zinc during a clinical or sub-clinical deficiency of zinc, has the potential to show positive changes in various parameters including reproduction, immune responsiveness, wound healing, etc. So, the key question is whether microencapsulating zinc will improve the bioavailability of it to animals or humans. At present, there is no known data that indicate that microencapsulating zinc would or any data that suggest it could potentially increase the absorption of zinc across the gut. However, microencapsulating of zinc will effectively taste mask zinc and could potentially reduce the interaction with zinc and its antagonist in the gut, but in order for it to be absorbed in its normal transport process, it would have to be released from the capsule in the duodenum allowing its binding to transport proteins. As it is released from the capsule it would then be available to be bound to those antagonist before attachment and transport via transport proteins/ligands. Another known antagonist to zinc is increasing levels of dietary copper (Cu). However, this antagonist (Cu) works through competition for binding sites on the transport protein. As Cu increases in the diet, it binds to metallothionien stronger than zinc, therefore tying up the transport site for zinc.
Metallothionien is a transport protein for zinc. In this relationship, microencapsulating zinc would not be beneficial to prevent the antagonist effect from Cu or other antagonist. However, for humans in particular, since zinc has an unpleasant taste, microencapsulation of this essential nutrient will allow its use across a wide cross section of applications.