Efficacy of bergamot: From anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative mechanisms to clinical applications as preventive agent for cardiovascular morbidity, skin diseases, and mood alterations.

Simone Perna,Mariangela Rondanelli,Vittoria Infantino,Daniele Spadaccini,Leonardo Botteri,Carolina Girometta,Antonella Riva,Pietro Allegrini,Giovanna Petrangolini

doi:10.1002/fsn3.903

Simone Perna, Mariangela Rondanelli + Show 7 more

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https://doi.org/10.1002/fsn3.903

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Abstract

We summarize the effects of bergamot (extract, juice, essential oil, and polyphenolic fraction) on cardiovascular, bone, inflammatory, skin diseases, mood alteration, anxiety, pain, and stress. This review included a total of 31 studies (20 studies on humans with 1709 subjects and 11 in animals (rats and mice)). In humans, bergamot‐derived extract (BE) exerts positive effects on hyperlipidemia with an oral dose from 150 mg to 1000 mg/day of flavonoids administered from 30 to 180 days, demonstrating an effect on body weight and in modulating total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL, and HDL. Studies in animals confirm promising data on glucose control (500/1000 mg/day of BE with a treatment lasting 30 days) are available in rats. In animals models, bergamot essential oil (BEO, 10 mg/kg or 20 mg/kg daily for 20 weeks) increases bone volume, decreases psoriatic plaques, increases skin collagen content, and promotes hair growth. Bergamot juice (20 mg/kg) is promising in terms of pro‐inflammatory cytokine reduction. In humans, aromatherapy (from 15 to 30 min) does not appear to be useful in order to reduce stress, anxiety, and nausea, compared to placebo. Compared to baseline, BE topical application and BEO aromatherapy reduce blood diastolic and systolic pressure and could have a significant effect on improving mental conditions.

Highlights

Bergamot is the common name of the Citrus bergamia Risso et Poiteau plant (Navarra, Mannucci, Delbò, & Calapai, 2015)
Concerning the effects of bergamot (BEO, Bergamot polyphenolic fraction (BPF), bergamot extracts (BE), bergamot juice (BJ), aromatherapy), the literature research based on the keywords “bergamot” and [“cardiovascular” or “cholesterol” or “hypertension” or “hdl” or “tryglicerides” or “ldl” or “weight”] retrieved 20 articles
This systematic review was performed in order to elucidate the main pharmacodynamic activities of bergamot both in animals and in humans

Summary

Introduction

Bergamot is the common name of the Citrus bergamia Risso et Poiteau plant (Navarra, Mannucci, Delbò, & Calapai, 2015). Fresh juice from bergamot has been studied to evaluate the polyphenolic composition by HPLC-DAD analysis and total polyphenols content by UV method (Picerno et al, 2011). The main preparations used are bergamot extracts (BE), with high content of flavonoids, such as neoeriocitrin, neohesperidin, naringin (Toth et al, 2015), bergamot polyphenolic fraction (BPF) (Bruno, Pandolfo, Crucitti, Maisano, Zoccali, et al, 2017), bergamot essential oil (BEO) (Watanabe et al, 2015), and aromasticks with bergamot/sandalwood or frankincense/mandarin/lavender (Dyer, Cleary, McNeill, Ragsdale-Lowe, & Osland, 2016) bergamot/vetivert/geranium (Wiebe, 1998), bergamot/lavender/cedarwood (Graham, Browne, Cox, & Graham, 2003) and bergamot juice (BJ) (Impellizzeri et al, 2015), bergamot/boxthorn extract (Shao, 2003) or bergamot essential oil plus other citrus essential oils plus grapefruit juice (Li, Zhu, Han, & Zhang, 2016) or bergamot flavonoids and other phytoextracts (Babish et al, 2016; Saiyudthong & Marsden, 2011)

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