People with psoriasis and eczema tend to have less zinc in their blood. Zinc pills are another matter

Zinc helps the skin keep its barrier and keeps immune responses in check, so it is a natural suspect in inflammatory skin disease. A systematic review and meta-analysis published in Nutrition Reviews on 5 October 2026, by dermatologists at Universitas Hasanuddin in Indonesia, gathered studies from 2000 to 2025 on zinc in psoriasis, atopic dermatitis (eczema) and seborrheic dermatitis.

Thirteen studies met their criteria. Across all three conditions, people with the skin disease had lower blood zinc than people without it, and where studies measured severity, lower zinc tended to go with worse disease. The direction of the result held up when single studies were removed one at a time. The studies differed a lot, though, in how zinc was measured, in the ages of the people studied and in whether serum or red cells were tested.

On treatment, the review is cautious: the few trials of zinc supplements did not show a routine benefit beyond standard care. The authors' advice is to correct a zinc deficiency when a test shows one, not to give zinc to everyone with these conditions. Low zinc may also be a result of inflammation rather than a cause, which a study like this cannot sort out.