Zinc, copper, manganese and gold content of the hair of infants.

In the hair of 41 normal newborn children the amounts of the trace elements zinc, copper, manganese and gold were followed up longitudinally by neutron activation analysis, the samples being taken on the 1st day of life, between the 63th and 109th days, the 200th and 240 th as well as between the 368th and 478th days of life. In the newborn children no correlations among their hair trace elements themselves and with the duration of normal pregnancy, birth weight, weight percentiles according to Lubchenko et al. [21] and birth length were found. The zinc content of 212 +/- 63 ppm, the copper content of 8.1 +/- 2.3 ppm and the manganese content of 0.211 +/- 0.366 ppm agreed well with values in the literature from different parts of the world. The hair gold content was found to be 0.086 +/- 0.006 ppm. In early childhood the trace element contents do not exhibit any dependence on sex. The investigation of trace elements in the hair of babies resulted in the remarkable observation that in the first three months of life zinc, copper and gold contents shows a considerable increase to multiple levels of the birth values, followed by a decrease. This is important for the interpretation of hair trace element analyses in infants. There are significant positive correlations among zinc, copper and gold contents in hair. It must be emphasized that gold, although classified as a non-essential element, behaves in the hair of infants just like the physiologically important essential trace elements zinc and copper.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)