Neonatal sepsis is a major cause of mortality and morbidity especially in preterm neonates; in developing countries. This study was a prospective study including 103 neonates admitted to Kasr El Aini NICU in the period from February 2001 to August 2001. Enrolled infants were between 27-33 weeks of gestation. They were randomized to emollient group who received topical sunflower seed oil daily, during the first 28 days of life and the non-emollient group who received the standard nursery care. The incidence of early onset sepsis was approximately 70% of infants of both groups; which could have been caused by the prematurity, maternal risk factors (preeclampsia, PROM), the conditions around a septic or traumatic delivery or a source of contamination in the NICU. The serial masked evaluation of the skin condition score revealed an improvement in the emollient group and subgroup compared to the non-emollient groups and subgroups. This signified a minimal increase in scaling of the 2 groups. The results of sepsis work up (hematological parameters, CRP and follow up cultures revealed a slight reduction in the incidence of neosocomial infection in the emollient group compared to the non emollient group but this did not reach statistical significance. Klebsiella pneumonia was the predominant pathogen in the blood cultures; nasopharyngeal and axillary cultures. The nasopharyngeal cultures showed the highest rates of colonization compared to the axillary and rectal cultures and were not affected by emollient therapy. However the axillary cultures showed a significant decrease in the frequency of colonization in the emollient group suggesting a possible role for the emollient in preventing superficial colonization. There was high mortality rate in our study probably due to the high incidence of EOS, and the virulent gram –ve Klebsiella species, however the relative risk of death was reduced by using the emollient. There were no adverse effects encountered with the use of emollient. Malassezia Furfur was not cultured from any of our cultures; furthermore PCR done to retrieve these species was negative for all cases.