Abstract
Backgroud: Lippia alba (Verbenaceae) is a plant widely used in folk medicine to treat various diseases. The present work deals with the chemical composition of the crude essential oil extracted from leaves of L. alba and evaluation of its antimicrobial and cytotoxic activities. Methods: Leaves of L. alba were extracted by hydrodistillation and analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) as well as by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Cytotoxic and antimicrobial activities of crude essential oil were evaluated in vitro using MTT and broth microdilution assays, respectively. Results: Chemical analysis afforded the identification of 39 substances corresponding to 99.45% of the total oil composition. Concerning the main compounds, monoterpenes nerol/geraniol and citral correspond to approximately 50% of crude oil. The cytotoxic activity of obtained essential oil against several tumor cell lines showed IC50 values ranging from 45 to 64 µg/mL for B16F10Nex2 (murine melanoma) and A549 (human lung adenocarcinoma). In the antimicrobial assay, was observed that all tested yeast strains, except C. albicans, were sensitive to crude essential oil. MIC values were two to four-folds lower than those determined to bacterial strains. Conclusion: Analysis of chemical composition of essential oils from leaves of L. alba suggested a new chemotype nerol/geraniol and citral. Based in biological evidences, a possible application for studied oil as an antifungal in medicine, as well as in agriculture, is described.
Highlights
The Verbenaceae family, with tropical and subtropical distribution, is composed of approximately90 genera, including Lippia [1], with more than 200 species of herbaceous plants, small shrubs, and trees [2,3]
Microdilution tests were conducted according to the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI), OPAS1 M27-A2 for yeasts and OPAS M7-A6 for bacteria according to literature [25] with slight modifications
The yield of the essential oil extracted from L. alba was 0.21% based on the weight of the fresh leaves used in the distillation procedure
Summary
The Verbenaceae family, with tropical and subtropical distribution, is composed of approximately. In addition to these volatile compounds, other monoterpenes and phenylpropanoids have been described as main metabolites in the essential oils from L. alba: linalool, β-caryophyllene, tagetone, myrcene, γ-terpinene, camphor, estragole, eucalyptol, camphor, limonene, and piperitone [12,13,14,15,16,17,18] This variability has been explained due to factors such as seasons, flowering time, plant age, amount of precipitation, geographic and climatic factors [8,12,19], as well as the part of the studied plant, extraction method, soil characteristics, and the genetic variability of these plants [12,20,21,22,23]. Brazilian species [24,25,26], the present work deals with the chemical composition of the essential oil from leaves of the Brazilian species of L. alba, as well as the cytotoxic and antimicrobial evaluation of crude essential oil
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