Unfortunately, for the sports medicine professional, the role of socks in preventing injury and in enhancing performance is misunderstood and often neglected in treatment protocols. On the other hand, health care professionals receive no formal training on the topics of footwear or hosiery, yet, they are called upon regularly to give information to patients and the lay public in these unfamiliar subject areas. No wonder that physicians and podiatrists are often quoted in consumer magazines giving erroneous information about socks and footwear. There were virtually no original scientific articles pertaining to hosiery published in the medical literature until 1989. Then, almost overnight, clinical researchers recognized that major advances had been made during the 1980s in the fields of fiber technology and sock construction techniques.
Hosiery now appears like high-tech sports equipment with possible medical applications.
A large number of studies were carried out on various patient populations, including athletes, to determine the role of hosiery in preventing pedal pathologies. A series of articles published by Andrew Boulton and Arisites Veves at the Manchester Royal Infirmary documented the protective effect of hosiery on the feet of diabetic and arthritic patients. At the same time, Herring and Richie published their studies demonstrating the superiority of acrylic fibers over cotton fibers in preventing the frequency and severity of friction blisters in running athletes. A significant amount of published research then followed, documenting attempts to utilize hosiery products to treat various clinical conditions. Ufer and co-workers studied the effect of hosiery to warm the feet of patients with spastic quadriplegia.