Albumin-normalized serum zinc: a clinically useful parameter for detecting taste impairment in patients undergoing dialysis.

Patients with renal failure often experience decreased serum zinc that remains uncorrected after dialysis. A complication of this depletion is taste impairment, which can detrimentally influence diet and nutrition. However, because more than half of all serum zinc is bound to albumin, we hypothesized that normalizing serum zinc to albumin levels may be associated with taste impairment.