Research
Micronutrients & recovery
Adequate selenium status prevents the mutation of benign viruses into virulent strains, particularly coxsackie and influenza viruses.
Maintaining adequate selenium levels through diet or supplementation may help prevent common viruses from mutating into more dangerous forms. This is especially relevant for those with low selenium status.
ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
in a Se-deficient host harmless viruses can become virulent... mutations occurred in the genome to give a cardiovirulent form of the virus which caused myocarditis
Why this rating
Evidence is primarily from animal models (mice), with some observational data in humans.
Source
The argument for increasing selenium intake
Margaret P. Rayman · Proceedings of The Nutrition Society · 2002
DOI 10.1079/pns2002153
narrative_reviewCited 463×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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