It may be possible to prevent babies from getting eczema—a costly, inflammatory skin disorder—just by applying something as inexpensive as petroleum jelly every day for the first six months of life.
A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics shows that seven common moisturizers could inexpensively prevent eczema in high-risk newborns. By using the cheapest moisturizer in the study (petroleum jelly), the cost benefit for prophylactic moisturization was only $353 per quality-adjusted life year—a generic measure of disease burden that assesses the monetary value of medical interventions in one’s life.
We're putting Vaseline on these babies to potentially prevent a very devastating disease.
