An overview of research of essential oils by self‐organizing maps: A novel approach for meta‐analysis study

Abstract

Essential oils (EOs) are commercially important products, sources of compounds with antioxidant and antimicrobial activities considered indispensable for several fields, such as the food industry, cosmetics, perfumes, pharmaceuticals, sanitary and agricultural industries. In this context, this systematic review and meta‐analysis, a novel approach will be presented using chemometric tools to verify and recognize patterns of antioxidant, antibacterial, and antifungal activities of EOs according to their geographic, botanical, chemical, and microbiological distribution. Scientific papers were selected following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta‐Analyses statement flow diagram, and the data were evaluated by the self‐organizing map and hierarchical cluster analysis. Overall, this novel approach allowed us to draw an overview of antioxidants and antimicrobials activities of EOs reported in 2019, through 585 articles evaluated, obtaining a dataset with more than 10,000 data, distributed in more than 80 countries, 290 plant genera, 150 chemical compounds, 30 genera of bacteria, and 10 genera of fungi. The networks for geographic, botanical, chemical, and microbiological distribution indicated that Brazil, Asia, the botanical genus Thymus, species Thymus vulgaris L. “thyme,” the Lamiaceae family, limonene, and the oxygenated monoterpene class were the most representative in the dataset, while the species Escherichia coli and Candida albicans were the most used to assess the antimicrobial activity of EOs. This work can be seen as a guide for the processing of metadata using a novel approach with non‐conventional statistical methods. However, this preliminary approach with EOs can be extended to other sources or areas of food science.

Recent Applications of Mixture Designs in Beverages, Foods, and Pharmaceutical Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Furthermore, we present a novel approach to meta-analysis studies through selforganizing maps, as successfully applied previously in our study [34]. This approach allows processing metadata using non-conventional statistical methods that verify cluster trends and similarities.…”

“…The Kohonen self-organizing map algorithm begins initializing the first grid with random synaptic weights and no organization applied to the map. Three key processes take place: competition, cooperation, and synaptic adaptation [34][35][36][37][38]. The SOM network routine developed was used according to the algorithm described in Haykin [37] and was applied using the Matlab software routine.…”

“…The SOM network routine developed was used according to the algorithm described in Haykin [37] and was applied using the Matlab software routine. For more details about the theoretical and mathematical foundations of the SOM algorithm, readers can consult the references [34,39,40] and Supplementary Material.…”

“…Possible sources of bias include study inclusion/exclusion criteria, the chosen database, date, language, number of articles, the impact of missing data, missing primary results, and article type selected for this study [34].…”

An Evaluation of the Potential of Essential Oils against SARS-CoV-2 from In Silico Studies through the Systematic Review Using a Chemometric Approach

“…Essential oils (EOs) are volatile liquids extracted from whole or parts of aromatic plants such as bark, fruits, flowers, and leaves [1]. These compounds have a broad biological spectrum with antimicrobial, antifungal, insecticide, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anticarcinogenic, and antiviral actions [2]. Accordingly, interest in EOs has been increasing in different fields, such as food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and medical applications [2,3].…”