Quantifying the association between acute leukemia and serum zinc, copper, and selenium: a meta-analysis

Acute leukemia is a clonal malignant disorder that occurs when immature blast cells accumulate in bone marrow. Zinc (Zn) and copper (Cu) are related to normal lymphocyte maturation and immune function regulation. Selenium (Se) is protective against oxidative damage. The aim of this meta-analysis is to statistically synthesize results from studies that have investigated the levels of Zn, Cu, and Se in acute leukemia patients. The effect size, delta, was used to standardize the raw data. The robust variance estimation (RVE) method was performed to measure the pooled effect size and variance. Results suggest significant negative differences for levels of serum Zn (p < .05, delta = -1.21; 95% CI, -2.13--0.28) and Se (p < .05, delta = -1.84; 95% CI, -3.39--0.29) and significantly positive differences between serum Cu levels (p < .01, delta = 1.94; 95% CI, 1.02-2.87) in acute leukemia, as compared to the controls.