Skin care treatments in babies, such as using moisturisers on the skin during the first year of life, probably do not stop them from developing eczema, and probably increase the chance of skin infection.

Evidence published in the Cochrane Library today will reassure people who want to stop smoking that quitting for at least 6 weeks may improve their mental wellbeing, by reducing anxiety, depression, and stress. People’s social relationships are unlikely to suffer if they stop smoking. 

How well does behavioural activation therapy work for depression in adults?  And what about the effects of this treatment on depression for adults with long‐term physical conditions? Two Cochrane systematic reviews look at the available evidence.

Healthcare workers supporting people with ear, nose and throat (ENT) issues needed to know how COVID-19 may impact on their care and how to protect themselves from infection when providing this. 

By September 2020, there were more than 3000 COVID-19 trials registered and the number keeps growing. Systematic reviews compile all the relevant evidence about a topic to help inform decisions. However, where new research is being completed quickly, like COVID-19, a way of regularly updating systematic reviews with new studies is needed, so that all the evidence can be used to support urgent decisions.

The US Agency for Healthcare Research Quality has prioritized a crucial need to disseminate health research findings. As such, a grant was awarded to Dr. Tianjing Li to convene a conference on “Innovative Methods Research to Increase the Utility of Systematic Reviews.”

What is the best way to support resilience and mental well-being in frontline healthcare professionals during and after a pandemic? What is ‘resilience’?

In this short interview, PhD student Camilla Hansen Nejstgaard, from Cochrane Denmark and Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine Odense (CEBMO) at the University of Southern Denmark, tells us about how conflicts of interest may impact on recommendations of drugs and medical devices. She is the lead author of a recently published Cochrane Methodology Review on this topic.

People experiencing homelessness are more likely to use tobacco, and face many problems that make it difficult for them to quit. Health problems caused by using tobacco are among the leading causes of death among this group of people, so there is a need to find new ways to reduce tobacco use in people experiencing homelessness.

The KT online learning module is freely accessible to everyone, you just need to log in with a Cochrane account (free to register) and should take about 1 hour to complete.