What Moisturizer Should I Use on a Foot in Someone With Diabetes?

It sounds like a simple question.

“What moisturizer should I use on my feet if I have diabetes?”

But it is actually an important one.

Dry skin—or xerosis—is extremely common in people with diabetes. On the foot, dry skin can become fissured skin. Fissured skin can become a portal for infection. And in a vulnerable diabetic foot, that seemingly small crack can become the first domino in a much larger problem.

So moisturizer is not just cosmetic.

It is part of maintaining the skin’s armor.

A newly published systematic review and meta-analysis in Frontiers in Clinical Diabetes and Healthcare helps put some science behind what has traditionally been a rather fuzzy recommendation. Borgström and colleagues reviewed randomized controlled trials evaluating topical treatments for foot xerosis in adults with diabetes who did not have an active ulcer. Eleven articles representing 12 randomized controlled trials met their criteria.

So, what worked?

The authors separated ordinary moisturizing bases from what they called “functional creams”—formulations containing additional active ingredients, most commonly humectants designed to draw and retain water in the skin.

Those functional creams performed better.

Compared with standard base formulations, they significantly reduced xerosis severity at both two weeks and four weeks. They also significantly improved measured skin hydration.

And one ingredient stood out:

Urea.

Across the available randomized evidence, urea-based creams were more effective than standard base creams after four weeks, with the authors rating the certainty of that evidence as high. Adverse events across the studies were uncommon and generally mild.

That makes the practical answer refreshingly straightforward.

If the foot is dry, think urea.

For someone with diabetes and uncomplicated dry skin of the foot, a urea-containing moisturizer is a very reasonable evidence-based choice.

The important nuance is that this meta-analysis supports urea-containing formulations as a class. It does not establish that one particular brand—or one magical percentage of urea—is universally best. The literature remains heterogeneous, and the authors appropriately call for larger, higher-quality randomized trials with longer follow-up.

That distinction matters.

The pharmacy aisle wants to sell us a winner.

The science tells us which ingredient family has the strongest signal.

Where should moisturizer go?

For routine diabetic foot care, moisturize the dry skin of the tops, bottoms, sides and heels of the feet.

Generally, avoid routinely packing moisturizer between the toes, where excess moisture can encourage maceration.

And an important distinction:

A moisturizer is for intact dry skin. It is not a treatment for an open diabetic foot ulcer.

If there is an ulcer, drainage, significant fissuring, redness, swelling, warmth or other concerning change, that foot deserves proper clinical evaluation rather than simply another layer of cream.

The bigger idea: protect the envelope

We spend enormous effort thinking about what is inside the diabetic foot—neuropathy, ischemia, inflammation, infection and mechanical stress.

But the skin is the envelope holding the whole package together.

When that envelope becomes brittle and cracks, the outside world suddenly has a doorway in.

So perhaps the humble moisturizer deserves a little more respect.

Bottom line

For diabetic foot xerosis, the best current randomized evidence favors functional moisturizers—particularly those containing urea—over simple moisturizing bases.

Use them regularly on dry, intact skin.

Keep the interdigital spaces dry.

Inspect the feet every day.

Because sometimes limb preservation begins with something as ordinary as keeping the skin soft enough not to break.

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Reference:
Borgström K, Björklund S, Gudmundsson P, Ericsson A, Acosta S. Moisturiser formulations for diabetic foot xerosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. Frontiers in Clinical Diabetes and Healthcare. 2026;7:1922860. doi:10.3389/fcdhc.2026.1922860.