The essential oil extracted by hydrodistillation from Romanian Artemisia annua aerial parts was characterized by GC/MS analysis, which allowed the identification of 94.64% of the total oil composition. The main components were camphor (17.74%), α-pinene (9.66%), germacrene D (7.55%), 1,8-cineole (7.24%), trans-β-caryophyllene (7.02%), and artemisia ketone (6.26%). The antimicrobial activity of this essential oil was evaluated by determining the following parameters: minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC), minimal bactericidal concentration (MBC), minimal fungicidal concentration (MFC), and minimal biofilm eradication concentration (MBEC). Moreover, the soluble virulence factors were quantified with different biochemical substrates incorporated in the culture media. The reference and resistant, clinical strains proved to be susceptible to the A. annua oil, with MICs ranging from 0.51 to 16.33 mg/ml. The tested essential oil also showed good antibiofilm activity, inhibiting both the initial stage of the microbial cell adhesion to the inert substratum and the preformed mature biofilm. When used at subinhibitory concentrations, the essential oil proved to inhibit the phenotypic expression of five soluble virulence factors (hemolysins, gelatinase, DNase, lipases, and lecithinases). Briefly, the present results showed that the A. annua essential oil contained antimicrobial compounds with selective activity on Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial strains as well as on yeast strains and which also interfere with the expression of cell-associated and soluble virulence factors.
The hydrodistilled essential oils and volatile compounds (by static headspaces technique) of Mentha piperita L. and M. spicata L. were characterized by GC-MS. Headspace analysis of Mentha piperita revealed the existence of menthone (25.4%), 1,8-cineole (17.7%) and menthol (12.1%) as the main components, while the essential oil contained high amounts of menthol (46.8%) and menthone (25.6%). By contrast, headspace analysis of M. spicata showed a high content of limonene (37.0%) together with carvone (13.0%), -pinene (10.4%) and -pinene (9.8%), while the essential oil was reach in carvone (51.7%), dihydrocarveol (11.5%) and cis-dihydrocarvone (9.1%). Eleven samples of peppermint tea available on the Romanian market were analysed by headspace GC-MS. The volatile profile of the tea samples was compared with that of Mentha piperita L. and certain differences were emphasized and discussed.
A new, simple, and sensitive spectrometric method was developed for hydroquinone (HQ) determination in the presence of other depigmenting agents (kojic acid (KA), glycolic acid (GA), and ascorbic acid (AA)), commonly introduced in skin lightening products. The method is based on the oxidation of the depigmenting agents by potassium dichromate in sulfuric acid medium and subsequent measurement of the amplitude of the first-order derivative absorption spectrum at 268 nm. By applying the zero-crossing method, at this wavelength, the oxidation products of KA, AA, and GA do not interfere in the indirect determination of HQ. Beer’s law was obeyed in the range of 0.22–22 μg·mL−1 HQ, with a detection limit of 0.07 μg·mL−1. The developed method was applied with good results for the first time to the rapid determination of HQ in binary, ternary, and quaternary mixtures, thus proving that it could represent an effective tool for various skin lightening products analyses.
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