Antioxidant and Anti-Inflammatory Activities of Essential Oils: A Short Review

Miguel, Maria Graça

Amomum tsao-ko Crevost & Lemairé is a zingiberaceous plant called 'Caoguo' or 'Tsao-ko', which is widely distributed in the south-west of China. As some reports have related cytotoxicity with antioxidant activity and the essential oil studied by the authors had substantial anticancer activity, [56] assayed the antioxidant activity of their samples using diverse methods, being one of them the TBARS method. The lipidic substrate was constituted by liposomes containing lecithin, and the induction of peroxidation was performed with ferrous sulphate. They found weak antioxidant activity, as expected by the authors, due to the low phenolic content of the oils. The main component was 1,8-cineole. The absence of phenolic compounds related with weak antioxidant activity is not in accordance with those reported by [44, 55] , which found potent and moderate activity with oils presenting furanodiene, germacrene D, furanodienone, curzerenone, and sabinene and limonene, respectively. In spite of the different composition of the oils it is also important to stress that this difference of activities may also be attributed to the different lipidic substrate used in both works.