Limitations
eczema
ECZEMA
There are some limitations in this study. Firstly, for the convenient implementation in this pilot study, it was designed to enroll participants from one community, which might influence the real intervention effects. Secondly, this study was designed not to supervise the implementation of MPIM during the latter 3 months, aiming to observe the feasibility and adherence of MPIM. Therefore, the outcomes of infant-mother dyads at the end of 5-month intervention might be affected by the various performing frequency of MPIM. Thirdly, due to the small sample size, this study didn't analyze the potentially different effects caused by various frequency of MPIM at the end of 5-month intervention. Fourthly, this pilot study only enrolled infants and their mothers to observe the potential effect on maternal mental state. It can also extend to fathers of eczema infants who also experience worse mental state during postpartum. Fifthly, due to the study feature, mothers could not be blinded and they also assessed their own mental state and infantile quality of life, which might bring certain placebo effect. In the future, multi-centered randomized controlled trials with larger size are warranted to further investigate the potential benefits of parent-performed infant massage on the outcomes of infant-parent dyads for a prolonged time.