Essential Oils from Medicinal Plants: A Review of Skin Disease Treatments

Abstract

For this chapter, a literature search of PubMed®/ScienceDirect was performed on January 20th, 2017 using the following search terms: essential oils AND skin conditions AND treatment. The authors (PM-AOM) screened titles and abstracts for relevance. Articles that did not have an abstract or full text available in English or Spanish were excluded. The remaining publications that included information on treatments of essential oils for skin diseases were analyzed in-depth.After this literature search,11 scientific studies in 8 families of medicinal plants were selected.The species were Lippia sidoides, Origanum vulgare, Cymbopogon flexuosus, Cymbopogon citratus, Curcuma longa, Citrus limetta, Artemisia sieberi Besser, Pamburus missionis (Wight) Swingle, Croton rhamnifolioides, Arborvitae (Thuja plicata) and Frankincense. The major chemical components of the essential oils that exhibited a 20% or higher percentage of relative abundance included neral, germacrone, α-phellandrene, geranial, citronellal, terpinolene, 1,8 cineol, camphor, limonene, methyl-thujane, and carvacol. Most of the studies described investigations of the anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antiproliferative activities of the essential oils. Only one study showed antipigmentation activity, and two studies demonstrated antifungal and anticancer activity in human dermal fibroblasts and skin epidermoid cancer cells.