Essential Oils as Components of a Diet-Based Approach to Management of Helicobacter Infection

Abstract

An increased density of Helicobacter pylori in the gastric mucosa can be associated with more severe gastritis and an increased incidence of peptic ulcers. Therefore, people with asymptomatic gastritis would certainly benefit from a nutritional approach to help them manage the infection and therefore decrease the risk of development of associated pathologies. We analyzed the activities of 60 essential oils against H. pylori P1 and identified 30 oils that affected growth, with in vitro inhibition zones ranging between 0.7 and 6.3 cm in diameter. We further analyzed the effects of 16 oils with different activities on H. pylori P1 viability. Fifteen showed strong bactericidal activities, with minimal bactericidal concentrations after 24 h ranging from 0.02 to 0.1 g/liter at pH 7.4. Even though slight variations in activities were observed, the essential oils that displayed the strongest bactericidal potentials against H. pylori P1 were also active against other Helicobacter strains tested. Among the pure constituents of different essential oils tested, carvacrol, isoeugenol, nerol, citral, and sabinene exhibited the strongest anti-H. pylori activities. Although oral treatment of H. pylori SS1-infected mice with carrot seed oil did not result in significant decreases in the bacterial loads in the treated animals compared to those in the control animals, in all experiments performed, the infection was cleared in 20 to 30% of carrot seed oil-treated animals. Our results indicate that essential oils are unlikely to be efficient anti-Helicobacter agents in vivo. However, their effects may not be irrelevant if one plans to use them as food additives to complement present therapies.

The role of herbs and spices in cancer prevention

“…H. pylori is susceptible to several essential oils, of which cinnamon bark oil and savory oil were the most effective bactericial inhibitors, with the minimum bactericidal concentration for each oil in a liquid medium equal to1 g/L at 1 hour and 0.04 g/L at 24 hours (39). Many of the essential oils with positive bactericidal activity were effective not only against the P1 strain, but other H. pylori strains as well, including a strain resistant to the two drugs which are part of current anti-H. pylori therapies (39). Garlic has been associated with low rates of peptic ulceration and reduced risk for gastric cancer in epidemiologic studies, yet when garlic oil capsules were given to patients with dyspepsia related to H. pylori in a pilot test, the garlic oil at the dose selected based on in vitro studies (4 mg garlic oil capsule with a meal four times per day for 14 days) did not eradicate or suppress H. pylori (47).…”

“…Liu and Nakano postulated that these differences may have been related to use of dried garlic powder in their study compared to other studies which relied on other forms of garlic (41). Essential oils extracted from herbs and spices have displayed varying bactericidal activity when compared to the known antimicrobial activity of their primary constituents, which indicates there may be unknown minor components in the essential oils with antimicrobial activity, or there may be synergistic or antagonistic effects between all the bioactive compounds combined (39,43). Yano et al measured the inhibitory action of several herbs and spices on E. coli and V. parahaemolyticus and found that gram positive bacteria which form spores appear to be more sensitive to herbs and spices (44).…”

“…Herbs and spices which possess antimicrobial activity include those containing simple phenols and phenolic acids, coumarins, terpenoids, and alkaloids (38,39). A study in the late 1990s set out to investigate the hypothesis that herbs and spices, which have known antimicrobial properties, were incorporated into food preparation for their antimicrobial properties rather than for purely organoleptic purposes (17).…”

Sensitivity of pathogenic and commensal bacteria from the human colon to essential oils

“…Several studies also found that the most pathogenic gut bacteria, E. coli O157 : H7 (Burt & Reinders, 2003;Delaquis et al, 2002), Salmonella typhimurium (Si et al, 2006), Clostridium perfringens (Ouwehand et al, 2010), Campylobacter jejuni (Anderson et al, 2009) and Helicobacter pylori (Bergonzelli et al, 2003) are inhibited by EO in vitro. The aim of the present study was to compare the effects of a range of EO and EO compounds on human pathogenic and commensal intestinal bacteria.…”

Effect of essential oil from Citrus aurantium in maternal reproductive outcome and fetal anomaly frequency in rats

“…Similar to ephedra, it contains alkaloids that are adrenergic agonists and is often incorporated into supplements designed to aid in weight loss (Haaz et al 2006). It was confirmed that its essential oil has an antibiotic effect against Helicobacter pylori (Bergonzelli et al 2003). Novel triterpenoid from C. aurantium L. also possesses chemopreventive properties against human colon cancer cells (Gougeon et al 2005).…”