To study the prevalence and severity of atopic eczema (AE) in children aged 0 to 4 years.

Observational study.

We registered all children who visited the child health centres in the West-Veluwe region of the Netherlands between 1 January and 30 April 2005 and used objective criteria to establish if they suffered from AE. Data were also collected about subjective symptoms such as itch and sleeping problems and the severity of AE was established using the Three Item Severity (TIS) score.

A total of 9351 children were examined for eczema (5796 infants and 3555 toddlers) . Infants suffered more frequently from eczema than toddlers (8.70% versus 5.54%) and boys suffered more than girls.

The total prevalence of AE in this study group of children aged 0 to 4 years was 7.5%.

This supplementary information is presented as submitted by the corresponding author. It has not been copy-edited and NTvG does not guarantee the accuracy of the data.