2008/06/13 by Allison E. Aiello, Rebecca M. Coulborn, Vanessa Pérez +1 · 4 citations
Medicine · Health Professions · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Nursing · #Infection Control in Healthcare #Pediatric health and respiratory diseases #Food Safety and Hygiene #Hygiene #Medicine #Psychological intervention #Meta-analysis #Hand washing #Environmental health #Confidence interval #Intervention (counseling) #Intensive care medicine #Internal medicine #Nursing #Pathology
paper · doi:10.2105/ajph.2007.124610
openalex publication_date 2008/06/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/16
To quantify the effect of hand-hygiene interventions on rates of gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses and to identify interventions that provide the greatest efficacy, we searched 4 electronic databases for hand-hygiene trials published from January 1960 through May 2007 and conducted meta-analyses to generate pooled rate ratios across interventions (N=30 studies). Improvements in hand hygiene resulted in reductions in gastrointestinal illness of 31% (95% confidence intervals [CI]=19%, 42%) and reductions in respiratory illness of 21% (95% CI=5%, 34%). The most beneficial intervention was hand-hygiene education with use of nonantibacterial soap. Use of antibacterial soap showed little added benefit compared with use of nonantibacterial soap. Hand hygiene is clearly effective against gastrointestinal and, to a lesser extent, respiratory infections. Studies examining hygiene practices during respiratory illness and interventions targeting aerosol transmission are needed.