Background: Diabetes mellitus is a major health care problem. The relationship betweentype2diabetes and zinc has frequently been reported in various researches. This study hastwo major purposes:(1) To investigate plasma zinc level in healthy normal glucosetolerance (NTG) and type2diabetic (T2DM)(2) To demonstrate the relationship betweenzinc plasma level and T2DM.Methods: A case-control study was used which include two groups:718NTG healthyindividuals as control group and658T2DM individuals as case group. The plasma zinclevel was determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Personalinformation on demography was collected by using medical health questionnaire.Results: The T2DM group compared with the control group showed a significantly higherprevalence on age, body mass index, fasting glucose level, family history of diabetes andhypertension history,(P<0.001). The zinc plasma level for T2DM group median (1.05mg/l),was significantly lower compared to control group (1.63mg/l),(P<0.001). The frequencytable showed that along with increasing the zinc concentration the frequency numbers weresignificantly decreased on T2DM, while the control group was just the opposite (P<0.001). CrudeOR value, for II, III, IV Zinc level were0.319(95%CI,0.227-0.447),0.177(95%CI,0.126-0.249),0.045(95%CI,0.031-0.068) respectively (P<0.001). After adjustment of age,sex, BMI,family history of diabetes and fasting plasma glucose and history of hypertension,and even in further stratification analysis for subgroup, the OR values still showedgradually decreasing trend along with the increasing zinc concentration, and the values wereless than1,with highly significant relation (P<0.001). Conclusion: The results show that T2DM group plasma zinc level is significantly decreased,which means as the zinc concentration decreasing it is the more likely to develop type2diabetes, which may conclude that zinc is suggested to be a protective or improving factorand supplementation with zinc rich food may help in preventing the disease or it’scomplications.