Mentha piperita: Essential Oil and Extracts, Their Biological Activities, and Perspectives on the Development of New Medicinal and Cosmetic Products.

This review aims to analyze Mentha piperita L. as a potential raw material for the development of new health-promoting products (nutraceuticals, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical products). A lot of scientific publications were retrieved from the Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar databases which enable the study and generalization of the extraction procedures, key biologically active compounds of essential oil and extracts, biological properties, and therapeutic potential of M. piperita, along with perspectives on the development of its dosage forms, including combinations of synthetic active substances and herbal preparations of M. piperita. The results of this review indicate that M. piperita is a source rich in phytoconstituents of different chemical nature and can be regarded as a source of active substances to enhance health and to develop medicinal products for complementary therapy of various conditions, especially those related with oxidant stress, inflammation, and moderate infections. Essential oil has a broad spectrum of activities. Depending on the test and concentration, this essential oil has both anti- and prooxidant properties. Gram-positive bacteria are more sensitive to the essential oil of M. piperita than Gram-negative ones. This review also considered some facets of the standardization of essential oil and extracts of M. piperita. Among the identified phenolics of extracts were caffeic acid, rosmarinic acid, eriocitrin, luteolin derivates (luteolin-7-O-rutinoside, luteolin-7-O-glucoronide), and hesperidin. The concentration of these phenolics depends on the solvent used. This review also considered the relationships between the chemical component and biological activity. The results showed that the essential oil and extracts reduced inflammation in vitro by inhibiting the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6), and in vivo by reducing the paw edema induced using carrageenan injection in rats. Therefore, herbal preparations of M. piperita are promising medicinal and cosmetic preparations for their usage in skincare and oral cavity care products with antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and wound-healing properties. This plant can also be regarded as a platform for the development of antibacterial preparations and combined anti-inflammatory and cardioprotective medicinal products (synthetic active substances plus herbal preparations). This review could be considered for the justification of the composition of some medicinal products during their pharmaceutical development for writing a registration dossier in the format of Common Technical Document.

Chemical Composition of the Essential Oil of the New Cultivars of Lavandula angustifolia Mill. Bred in Ukraine.

Lavender, otherwise known as Lavandula angustifolia Mill., is widely used in landscaping, and its oil is a valuable raw material used in many industries. Therefore, new varieties of this plant are bred. The essential oil composition obtained from fresh flowers of thirteen new Ukrainian cultivars of L. angustifolia were analysed by GC-MS, and eighty-two components were identified. Linalool and linalyl acetate were principal constituents of all of the samples, and ranged from 11.4% to 46.7% and 7.4% to 44.2%, respectively. None of the studied samples fulfilled the requirements of Ph. Eur. and ISO 3515:2002. The main reason was a high content of α-terpineol (0.5-4.5%) and/or terpinene-4-ol (1.2-18.7%). Our results are in line with multiple researchers showing that the studied lavender oils do not comply with the industry standards despite their authenticity. We also investigated the effect of the growth year on the chemical composition of five tested cultivars grown on the same plots and noticed a considerable variability between years. The obtained experimental data did not show a significant inter-year trend for the content changes of the major components. Our results allow us to deeply characterize the new cultivars and evaluate their oil for a possible use in the industry, or to designate them for future selective breeding.