Project overview
The BATHE study found that the bath emollients did not help childhood eczema.
In this study, children aged 1 to 11 with eczema were randomly allocated to 2 groups:
- standard eczema treatment plus bath emollient.
- standard eczema management without bath emollient.
Parents or carers completed weekly diaries including a questionnaire about eczema severity.
Most children's eczema improved a bit over the study year, but there was no real difference between the two groups in how much they improved. Our paper was published in the BMJ.
Although we found that pouring bath emollients into the bath water doesn't help, it is still really important to use leave-on emollient moisturisers and to use emollient products where these help to avoid soap.
We are very grateful to all the families and practices who helped us to answer this question. We hope our research will help to make sense of what treatments are worth spending time and money on.
