Dr. Prasad

So when you got your annual winter cold, did you rush out to the store and buy zinc lozenges? What about that zinc mist you’re supposed to spray up your nose?

Although popular magazines, television marketers and your friends and neighbors seem to have just discovered the wonders of zinc, a Wayne State University School of Medicine professor knew all along that zinc is a key element needed to keep the immune system strong. For his work, which spans more than three decades, Ananda Prasad, MD, PhD, recently was honored with a mastership from the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine.

Dr. Prasad, a professor of internal medicine (hematology-oncology), is considered a world authority on zinc deficiency and its manifestations regarding human health. In 1963, while working to establish a university in Iran, Dr. Prasad met a 21-year-old man who looked like a 10-year-old. The man’s symptoms, which included severe anemia, low iron and growth retardation, proved to be widespread. Commonly, people affected by the syndrome would die of pneumonia or parasitic diseases.

Although Dr. Prasad suspected these people had iron deficiencies due to poor diet, he wondered whether another metal deficiency would account for the growth retardation. He found it, and it was zinc. Studies already had shown that rabbits and mice lacking zinc experienced stunted growth. During the course of the 1960s, Dr. Prasad produced several studies, some of them now considered classic in the nutritional medicine field, showing that zinc supplements could counteract the syndrome.

He ended up proving that, at the cellular level, zinc is necessary to T cells, which battle all kinds of infections. Without zinc, T cells don’t function effectively, allowing potentially anything from the common cold to cancer to invade the body. Dr. Prasad believes zinc and iron deficiencies occur in more than a billion people worldwide; one of Dr. Prasad’s studies has shown one in four Detroiters to be zinc deficient.

Dr. Prasad graduated from Patna Medical College in Bihar, India. He earned his PhD from the University of Minnesota, where he completed his residency in internal medicine and hematology. In 1963, Dr. Prasad joined WSU as an assistant professor of medicine and director of hematology. He held the latter post until 1984 and later served as director of research for the department of internal medicine.