2026/05/25 by Mitchell Anderson, Dr Clint Bellenger, Georgia K. Chaseling +3 · 1 voice
Health Professions · Medicine · Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics · #Advancements in Transdermal Drug Delivery #Pressure Ulcer Prevention and Management #Thermoregulation and physiological responses
paper · doi:10.1016/j.jtherbio.2026.104494
openalex publication_date 2026/05/25 · openalex created_date 2026/05/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Objectives Skin wetting is a low-cost, feasible cooling strategy in most resource settings. Therefore, the objective was to determine the effect of skin wetting on physiological strain and exercise performance. Methods MEDLINE, PubMed, Scopus and SPORTDiscus were systematically searched. Random-effects meta-analyses were used to determine the effect of skin wetting methods on core temperature (T core ), skin temperature (T skin ), sweat loss, heart rate (HR) and thermal sensation during exercise. The effect of skin wetting on T core during pre-, and post-cooling, passive heating, and exercise performance were narratively reviewed. Results Twenty-six studies were included in the review. Skin wetting did not mitigate the rise in T core during exercise (p=0.207). During exercise, skin wetting mitigated the rise in T skin (p<0.001), and sweat rate (p=0.02), and improved thermal sensation (p<0.001) however, end-of-exercise HR was not significantly impacted (p=0.372). Five of seven studies favoured skin wetting for improving exercise performance. Conclusion Skin wetting does not attenuate the rise in T core or HR during exercise, however, there was wide variation in study design such as, exercise intensity and duration, and skin wetting volume and frequency. However, skin wetting mitigated the rise in T skin , whole body sweat rate, and improved thermal sensation during exercise. Skin wetting appeared to improve exercise performance, possibly mediated by an improved thermal sensation. Registration https://osf.io/aed64 /