Xu D, Stengel R, Sun P, et al. - This is a meta-analysis of nine randomized controlled trials to assess if the early use of emollients in infancy can avoid later development of atopic dermatitis (AD). Findings call for randomized controlled, multicenter, large-sample trials, in future, with an excellent study design and high methodological quality on early use of emollients in high-risk infants to avert AD.

• Nine randomized controlled trials on early use of emollients in infants were identified from Medline, Embase, Web of Science, PubMed, Cochrane Library and other databases.

• For incidence rate, the estimated OR value was 0.7 (95% CI: 0.48–1.01), and there was no significant publication bias according to Egger’s test.

• No statistically significant difference in incidence rate of AD was found between the experimental and control groups.

• A definitive conclusion could not be reached because of different methods of using emollients, different follow-up times and different sample sizes included in this meta-analysis.