Background With regard to antioxidant role of zinc in body, zinc deficiency may be considered as one of the carcinogenic agents. Thus the determination of zinc deficiency percent in patients who are suffered from different types of cancers is useful to determine the dose of zinc supplementation which is used to such patients. In this study we evaluated the percent of zinc deficiency in different types of leukemic and lymphoma patients in comparison with normal subjects.

Methods Case population was considered of 50 patients who suffered from different types of leukemia (ALL, AML) and lymphoma. Our control was considered of 50 normal subjects with the same range of age (10–30 year). Atomic Absorption was used in order to determine zinc concentration.

Results Zinc deficiency percent was 73.3% in ALL and 54.5% in AML leukemic patients. 42.9% of lymphoma patients were zinc deficient. However zinc deficiency was seen in 16.7% of normal subjects too. It was not significant relation between the age and zinc concentration in both lymphoma and leukemic patients (p=0.39 and p= 0.34). In patients and normal groups mean zinc concentration in men was not statistically different from women (p=0.99, p=0.41).

Conclusion Results obtained in this study indicate that zinc deficiency is a serious difficult in our country. Because of 16.7% zinc deficiency in normal subjects, zinc supplementation is recommended for all normal and abnormal subjects. However the dose of zinc supplementation must be determined carefully in regard to some factors such as age, sex and different abnormalities.