Title

Impact of zinc deficiency on the recurrence in aphthous stomatitis: A prospective case-control study

Authors

Ashutosh Pandey¹, Ganiga Channaiah Shivakumar², Kavita Kumari Anshu¹,*, Anjana Bharti³, Sumit Verma⁴, Sagar Mani⁵ & Palak Jain Choudhary²

Affiliation

¹Department of Dentistry, Anugrah Narayan Magadh Medical College and Hospital, Gaya, Bihar, India; ²Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology, People’s College of Dental Sciences and Research Centre, People’s University, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India; ³Department of Public Health Dentistry, Mithila Minority Dental College and Hospital, Darbhanga, Bihar, India; ⁴Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Buddha Institute of Dental Sciences and Hospital, Patna, Bihar, India; ⁵Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology, Private Practitioner, Your Dentist, Jhumri Telaiya, Jharkhand, India; *Corresponding author

Email

Ashutosh Pandey - E-mail: ashuanand289@gmail.com

Ganiga Channaiah Shivakumar - E-mail: shivakumar@peoplesuniversity.edu.in

Kavita Kumari Anshu - E-mail: dr.kavitaanshu@gmail.com

Anjana Bharti - E-mail: anjanabharti199@gmail.com

Sumit Verma - E-mail: sumitv0306@gmail.com

Sagar Mani - E-mail: sagarmani@gmail.com

Palak Jain Choudhary - E-mail: 31jainaaryash@gmail.com

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received June 1, 2026; Revised June 30, 2026; Accepted June 30, 2026, Published June 30, 2026

Abstract

Recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS) is one of the frequent problems of the mouth that affects 10 to 20 percent of the population. Therefore, it is of interest to find out if the level of zinc in the blood is related to the recurrence of RAS and if taking zinc can reduce the recurrence and severity of RAS. We enrolled 30 RAS patients with minor recurrent aphthous stomatitis, and 30 healthy controls matched to the RAS patients by age and sex from the clinic over 12 months and RAS patients had significantly lower fasting serum zinc levels than the controls (76.4 ± 11.2 µg/dL vs. 87.3 ± 8.9 µg/dL; p < 0.001). Zinc deficiency was seen in 56.7 percent of RAS patients with serum zinc levels less than 70 µg/dL compared with 16.7 percent of the controls (p < 0.001). Thus, low serum levels of zinc are significant predictors of recurrence of RAS and zinc can be used as an additional preventive measure against RAS.

Keywords

Stomatitis, aphthous; dietary supplements; recurrence; quality of life; zinc

Citation

Pandey et al. Bioinformation 22(6): 3599-3603 (2026)

Edited by

Vini Mehta  

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.