Interpretive Summary: A role for zinc in the mitigation of zoonotic disease attributable to RNA viruses—a review with application to One Health perspective

By: Christopher D Ashworth, Arturo Gomez, Michael T Socha, Mark E Branine

Implications:

• One Health is a concept that serves as a common foundation for connecting human and animal populations, primarily those of domestic livestock, poultry, wildlife, and companion animals, with environmental and socioeconomic factors, as it relates to the understanding, prevention, and treatment of multiple zoonotic diseases that can afflict all groups on a global basis.
• Numerous zoonotic diseases affecting both human and animal populations are attributable to various families of RNA viruses as the primary etiologic agent.
• A growing body of research is providing evidence to support the concept that dietary zinc can potentially have a role in the prevention and mitigation of zoonotic diseases attributable to RNA viruses.
• The increasing risk to One Health from an increased prevalence of RNA viral diseases requires a better understanding of the role nutritional immunity may have for prevention and mitigation.

Introduction

The concept of One Health may be associated with many diverse interpretations in both scope and practice as viewed from a particular frame of reference or perspective. From a general perspective of human and veterinary medicine, One Health is based on the general premise that human and veterinary medicine are connected at multiple levels, with environmental and socioeconomic factors often providing a common denominator. The interdisciplinary One Health High-Level Expert Panel (OHHELP; Adisasmito et al., 2022) has broadly defined One Health as an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems. The OHHELP definition also recognizes health of humans, domestic and wild animals, plants, and the wider environment (including ecosystems) constitutes an often-diverse set of factors that are intimately connected, integrated, and interdependent at multiple points and levels. Multiple events are occurring to converge many disparate effects into a generalized synergism affecting the health of global human and animal populations. These effects may include growing numbers of human populations that are expanding into new geographic areas, either through population growth, conflict-induced migration, or ecosystem disruption as affected by climate change. These factors along with increased international trade and global travel may result in a closer proximity between people and animals (wild and domestic) that allows for increased passage of pathogens that may facilitate the potential dissemination and emergence of existing and novel zoonotic diseases (Keusch et al., 2022). The recent occurrence of global pandemics, including severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus infection (SARS-COVID) in 2019 and the increasing prevalence of the H5N1 strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza A (HPAI-A) have required increased attention to the role of viral pathogens and specifically RNA viruses may have and their implications on One Health. A recent review by Ameni et al. (2024) documented seven major zoonotic outbreaks attributable to RNA viruses from 1997 to 2021 indicating three primary causative groups of RNA viruses associated with these outbreaks were: (1) HPAI-A and swine-origin influenza (H1N1); (2) SARS-COVID-19, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS-COVID), and other Coronavirus borne diseases; and (3) Zika virus infections. RNA viruses are also responsible for causing rabies, foot and mouth disease (FMD), and a myriad of other diseases affecting both human and/or animal populations. In general, viral diseases, including those attributable to RNA viruses, have had profound impacts on human and veterinary morbidity, mortality, and socioeconomic loss (Ameni et al., 2024).

Read the full article in the latest issue of Animal Frontiers: One Health for a Sustainable Future.