August 1, 2025, by mszteh
Prize-winning eczema research
By Kim Thomas and Laura Howells
Over the last few months, we have spent a lot of time sharing the results of our Eczema Bathing Study. It has been great to hear what the findings mean to people with eczema. Our study found that how often you have a bath or shower makes no different to eczema symptoms. People have told us it is helpful to know that you can bathe as often as you like – just do whatever suits you!
But, of course, talking to people with eczema is only half the story. We also need to share the news with doctors, nurses and pharmacists, so that they can provide advice to their patients. This is why we have been out and about at academic conferences to share the news.
Kim and Amanda went along to the British Association of Dermatologists’ annual conference in Glasgow to present the study results. This photo shows Kim with Beth Stuart, Chair of the UK Dermatology Clinical Trials Network.
We are delighted to say that we were awarded ‘Best Scientific Paper’ at the British Association of Dermatologists’ conference. You can see the (very large) trophy that we won in the image on the right. This is a fantastic achievement for this citizen-science project and reflects all of your hard work and commitment over the last few years – thank you! 
Some of the team also went to the Society for Academic Primary Care conference in Cardiff to present the findings to GPs and researchers working in primary care.
At the conferences, there was lots of interest in the study. We thought you’d like to know what questions came up:
Does water hardness matter?
Answer: We didn’t look at this specifically. You might be interested in the results of the Softened Water Eczema Trial that we did some time ago – this study showed no benefit from installing a water softener for people with established eczema. However, the SOFTER trial, which was a smaller feasibility study suggested that water softeners might help in preventing eczema in babies. A bigger study is now needed to test this.
Does it matter how long you spend in the bath or shower?
Answer: Our study didn’t set out to answer this question. We asked people to tell us how long they spent in the bath or shower at the start of the study. We then used this information to check if the two groups were roughly the same. We asked everyone to carry on doing what they usually do – just changing how often they bathed. So there shouldn’t have been any changes to how long people were spending in the bath or shower. We know that some people have strong cultural beliefs about bathing practices, so how long to spend in the bath or shower could be worth exploring, possibly as a future Rapid Eczema Trial!
How do you know that the people taking part really did have eczema?
Answer: This is quite tricky to be sure about when running an online trial, as you never get to meet the participants. However, we recruited half of the study population through GPs – so all of these had a diagnosis of eczema on their medical records. We also asked people questions about their eczema and we found that 87% of people in the trial met the diagnostic criteria for eczema. An analysis looking just at those who we think definitely had eczema gave the same answer as the trial overall.
What advice would you give to other researchers wanting to follow your approach and conduct online citizen science trials?
Answer: It is all about the people and the community. Invest time in your community, communicate with them regularly, and listen to their feedback. Running several different clinical trials all using the same study design has meant that we can answer more questions for people living with eczema.
Over the coming months, we will continue to share the study results in different places and with different audiences. Please do keep sharing with your friends and networks too. 
Some of our citizen scientists have helped us to create some lovely flyers to help with sharing of the results. If you would like printed copies to share in your communities, please do get in touch at eczema@nottingham.ac.uk and we will send you some in the post.
We have a version for children, with a word search and maze on the back, and a version for adults with details about the study design and results on the back. You can download high-quality digital versions of the flyers here: child version; adult version.
If you enjoyed being a part of the Eczema Bathing Study, then do please check out our next Rapid Eczema Trial, which has just opened for people to join up.
For further details see the Keep Control Study page.
If you would like to find out more about Rapid Eczema Trials, please visit our website or email us on eczema@nottingham.ac.uk
The Rapid Eczema Trials project involves researchers, healthcare professionals and citizen scientists (people with eczema and parents of children with eczema) working together to answer important questions about eczema by designing and running clinical trials together.
The Rapid Eczema Trials programme is sponsored by Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) under its Programme Grants for Applied Research programme (PGfAR NIHR203279). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.
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