Trial reportPediatric research2026
Immune responses to topical emollient therapy with sunflower seed oil in young children with severe acute malnutrition in Bangladesh: a randomized controlled trial.
Trial report in Pediatric research, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Promising effects of topical sunflower seed oil, rich in linoleic acid, in infants with severe acute malnutrition.Pediatric research · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSevere acute malnutrition (SAM) is associated with immune dysregulation and increased infection risk. Nutritional rehabilitation is essential for recovery; adjunctive topical therapy with sunflower seed oil (SSO) has shown benefits in improving skin barrier function and reducing infection risk. This study investigates the impact of emollient therapy on systemic immune responses in young children with SAM.
methodsA nested study within a randomized controlled trial was conducted among 212 Bangladeshi children aged 2-24 months with SAM. Participants received standard acute nutritional rehabilitation alone or along with adjunctive SSO therapy. Serum cytokine levels were measured at baseline and after 10 days of treatment. Statistical analysis using general linear regression assessed treatment effects on cytokine changes.
resultsCytokine levels were generally low, with no clinically relevant differences in IL-8, IL-10, or TNF-α levels between treatment groups. A decreasing trend in IL-8 coincided with weight gain, suggesting a potential inverse relationship between inflammation and nutritional recovery.
conclusionsWhile emollient therapy improved skin barrier function and reduced infection risk, its effects appear to be mediated through local cutaneous rather than systemic immune modulation. Further research is needed to explore impacts of emollient therapy on local and systemic immunological effects in malnourished children. IMPACT: This is the first study to investigate whether topical therapy with sunflower seed oil (SSO) influences systemic immune responses in children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) undergoing standard acute nutritional rehabilitation. We found no significant changes in systemic cytokine levels attributable to 10 days of SSO treatment. Previous studies have shown that emollient therapy improves skin barrier integrity and function and reduces infection risk; this study underscores the need for further research (e.g., larger samples size, longer duration of treatment) into the immune response in malnourished children and how interventions like nutritional rehabilitation and emollient therapy interact with systemic inflammation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.