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Abstract
Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is a neuropsychiatric syndrome in patients with liver failure and/or porto-systemic bypass.
HE is classified into subtypes A, B and C. type C is further subdivided into 3 categories: episodic, persistant and minimal HE.
Minimal HE is also called subclinical HE. Subclinical hepatic encephalopathy (SHE) is characterized by quantifiable defects in neuropsychometric testing in cirrhotic patients who have a normal mental status.
Zinc is a cofactor of urea cycle enzymes, may be deficient in cirrhotic patients, especially when malnutrition present zinc deficiency is common in cases of non alcoholic cirrhosis with subclinical hepatic encephalopathy.
So the purpose of the present study was to determine the serum zinc level in patients with subclinical hepatic encephalopathy the study was conducted on 30 patients and 10 subjects. All patients as well as subjects were subjected to:
• History taking.
• Clinical examination.
• Laboratory investigation.
• Neuropsychological test (NCT-A, BDT, DST).
• Neurophysiological test (P300).
Patients suffering from SHE had lower serum zinc levels (34.50+23.51 mg/dl) than the control (80.00+7.96 mg/dl) which was highly significant difference as normal zinc level (70-100 mg/dl). Serum zinc level is inversely correlated with AST and ALT and prothrombin time and directly with platelets count and albumin level.