Volume 76, 15 December 2015, Pages 557–564
Chemical composition and functional properties of essential oils from Mentha species
Highlights
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- Mentha essential oils are rich in oxygenated monoterpenes.
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- The better antioxidant essential oils present piperitenone oxide as the major constituent.
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- Mentha spicata (Ciudad del Leste mint), which showed the best antifungal activity, contains pulegone as main constituent.
Abstract
The plants of the genus Mentha
are widely used in cooking, cosmetics and popular medicine. The present
work analyzes the chemical composition of the essential oils of several
Mentha species, and evaluates some functional properties such
as antioxidant, anticholinesterase and antifungal, to corroborate their
medicinal use. The oils obtained by hydrodistillation showed higher
levels of the monoterpenes limonene, isomenthone, menthol, menthofuran, d-neoisomenthol, 1,8-cineole (eucalyptol), d-carvone, linalool, linalyl acetate, piperitenone oxide and pulegone. The essential oil of Mentha longifolia (Himalayan silver mint) stood out for its antioxidant activity with IC50 of 0.86 ± 0.01 mg/mL by the DPPH method and 0.64 ± 0.02 mg/mL by the method of β-carotene/linoleic acid system. Mentha piperita oils (chocolate mint) and Mentha
spicata (menthol mint) showed good inhibition of acetylcholinesterase,
with enzyme inhibition zones of 1.0 cm and 0.9 cm, respectively. The
antifungal activity of Mentha essential oils showed moderate activity against Trichophyton rubrum and Microsporum canis, and the oil of M. spicata
(Ciudad del Leste mint) showed MIC and MFC near to the control. The
major components of the essential oils could be responsible for
evaluated activities, which are associated with the medicinal properties
reported for Mentha species.
Graphical abstract
Keywords
- Essential oil;
- Mentha;
- Antioxidant;
- Biological properties
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