Interventions for preventing occupational irritant hand dermatitis

In this Cochrane systematic review, researchers assessed the effects of interventions and strategies to prevent occupational irritant hand dermatitis (OIHD) in people without hand dermatitis who work in occupations where the skin is at risk of damage due to contact with water, detergents, chemicals or other irritants, or from wearing gloves.

Researchers found that:

• Moisturizers used alone or in combination with barrier creams may result in a clinically important protective effect, either in the long‐ or short‐term, for the primary prevention of OIHD
• Barrier creams alone may have slight protective effect, but this doesn’t appear to be clinically important
• Results for skin protection education varied substantially across the trials, the effect was imprecise, and the pooled risk reduction wasn’t large enough to be clinically important

Researchers pointed out that evidence from these studies overall was low quality, and that studies which apply standardized measures for the detection of OIHD are needed to confidently determine the effectiveness of the different prevention strategies.