Biological, Functional and Network Pharmacological Exploration of Essential Oils in Treatment and Healthcare of Human Diseases

Abstract

Essential oils (EOs) are natural products with bioactive functions that are obtained from various plant species, including Lavandula angustifolia and plant parts, through extraction methods, such as hydro-distillation, steam distillation and cold pressing, which can be dated back to ancient Egyptian and Greek times. Although various EOs are effective for disease treatment, such as human infectious diseases and mental disorders, the specific pharmacological mechanisms remain unclear due to its complex composition. Previous studies have attempted to recruit pharmaceutical analysis techniques, such as HPLC and MALDI-TOF, in order to elucidate the compositions of EOs. However, these have provided limited information on the mechanism of the bioactive functions of EOs. In recent years, network pharmacology has emerged as a convenient and appropriate approach to study the molecular mechanism of traditional medicines. To date, there is a lack of updated reviews on the recent progress of network pharmacology in the field of interactions between EOs and human diseases. Therefore, the present study scrutinized recent and important literatures in the field of network pharmacology and EOs, aiming to provide a timely yet brief overview of EOs as a potential treatment for diseases via network pharmacology, and facilitating the application of EOs as a complementary medicine and therapy for human diseases.

Keywords

Essential oils / Network pharmacology / Infectious disease / Chronic Dis-ease / Mental disorder

Acknowledgments

None.

Funding

We are grateful for the support provided by the University Philosophy and Social Science Research Foundation of Jiangsu Education Department (2022SJYB1185), and the Collaboration and Innovation Project of Xuzhou Medical University (XYRHCX2021008).

Conflict of interest

Liang Wang serves as an editorial board member of Future Inte-grative Medicine. The authors have no other commercial or finan-cial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest to disclose.

Author contributions

LW conceived the core ideas of the manuscript, planned the struc-ture of the manuscript, and was responsible for the student supervi-sion and project administration. YDZ, JWT, QHL MG, ZWM and JYM performed the literature review. JWT visualized the literature data. All authors wrote and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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