A team of researchers from Poland’s Lodz University of Technology (LUT) is working to develop innovative textile clothing for premature infants that is to protect them against dehydration and ensure thermal stability through special layered textile systems.
“The overall objective of the project is to develop innovative solutions for the construction of clothing products for prematurely born infants. These new products should reduce dehydration due to evaporation, and, at the same time, provide thermal comfort,”. “Total body water content changes drastically from before birth until one year of age. At 24 weeks gestational age, a baby’s total body water content is close to 80% of total body weight. This slowly decreases until the child is around one year of age, when total body water content is about 60% of total body weight,” the study says.
“After birth, infants are expected to lose approximately 5%-15% of their body weight, with more being lost in low birth weight infants.” “The cotton knitwear that is currently used [to protect such infants] causes thermal discomfort because the water that is absorbed from an infant’s body and its surrounding evaporates, and, as a result, it reduces its body temperature,”.
