Acrodermatitis Without Evidence of Bowel Disease

In Reply.— Clinical zinc deficiency is a rare occurrence which may be caused by inadequate zinc intake, faulty zinc absorption, or excessive zinc excretion. Kay et al describe a patient with a variant of acrodermatitis enteropathica. In the patient described by Kay et al, zinc intake was presumably adequate because the child was fed with a standard infant formula which was fortified with zinc to a final concentration of between 4 and 5 mg/L of zinc.