**7. Bioactive bast fiber textile products**

### **7.1 Clothing as a supplement of skin disease treatment**

The bast fibers showing inherent antibacterial and antioxidant activity and properties guaranteeing optimal comfort of clothing are suitable raw materials dedicated to

#### **Figure 17.**

*"Mesh" size and UPF of 100% flax fabrics [41].*


#### **Table 5.**

*The content of polyphenolic compounds in ethanol-water extracts (1:1) from the tested raw materials.*

functional textile manufacture. One of the examples of flax fiber functional textile is clothing, which acts as a supplement of dressing addressed the treatment of dermatological diseases [44]. The clothing was made of combination of two raw materials: linen for active part of clothing and organic cotton for other clothing elements. From both the raw materials, only linen-knitted fabric was enriched with biologically active medicinal plants extracts closed in microcapsules to ensure high bioactive performance of the selected clothing parts. Microcapsules containing herbal extracts are fixed to the inner clothing layer in order to guarantee direct and continuous contact of herbs with ill skin. The fabrics were dyed with natural herbal extracts to avoid allergic reaction and guarantee safety for dermatological patients during clothing wearing. To ensure an effective treatment of skin problems, herbal extracts, viola tricolor and green tea with proved properties suitable for dermatitis healing, were implemented to this solution. The content of active components in herbal extracts is presented in **Table 5** [45].

The results of tests conducted during 5 weeks of everyday functional clothing wearing by dermatological patients confirmed efficiency of applied method of skin treatment in improving of skin condition determined by skin moisture content (**Figure 18**) and transepidermal water loss (**Figure 19**) as well as lowering of skin illness sensation, e.g., itching feeling (**Figure 20**).

The observed changes of skin parameters tested before and after the experiment of clothing wearing proved that clothing made of naturally dyed linen-knitted fabric

#### **Figure 18.**

*Skin moisture content tested with the corneometric method (based on [45]).*

#### **Figure 19.**

*Transepidermal water loss (TEWL) measured during experiment (based on [45]).*

enriched with herbal extracts locked in microcapsules can serve as a supplement in the treatment of dermatological diseases.
