comparison of the effects of sodium metavanadate and zinc sulfate supplementation on lipid and glu-cose in patients with type 2 diabetes

type 2 diabetes mellitus is a chronic illness causing considerable morbidity and mortality. enormous advances have been made in medical care but more people are still having tendency to use herbal or alternative remedies. this study is a randomized, controlled trial on type 2 diabetic patients. the subject consisted of 60 patients divided randomly into three groups and supple-mented daily with 100 mg sodium metavanadate and 660 mg zinc sulfate or placebo for six weeks. the following were checked at baseline of the study and after six weeks: body mass index (bmi), blood pressure (bp), fasting blood sugar (fbs), 2-h postprandial glucose (2hpp), glycated hemoglobin (hba1c), triglyceride (tg), total cholesterol (tc), low-density lipo-proteins, and high-density lipoproteins. also hba1c, bmi and bp were measured after 12 weeks to evaluate the long-term effects of drugs. statistical analysis was performed using spss 11.5. data of continuous variables are expressed as means ± standard deviation. differences between groups were assessed by the paired t-test. comparison between three groups was done by post hoc tests. mean age of patients was 51.39 ± 8.60 years. the results of this study show a significant decrease in tg (p = 0.01) and bmi (p = 0.03). after 12 weeks, there was a signifi-cant decrease in bmi (p =0.01) in sodium metavanadate group. due to zinc sulfate administra-tion, significant decrease was seen in tg (p =0.005), tc (p = 0.02), ldl (p = 0.01) and systolic blood pressure (p = 0.02). after 12 weeks, there was a significant decrease in hba1c (p = 0.04) with zinc sulfate consumption. consumption of zinc sulfate in type 2 diabetic patients could be effective in lipid profile. it is recommended to use another vanadium compound to achieve better results.