The Safety Evaluation of the Garlic Essential Oil

• Main Authors: Meng-Hsuan Lin, 林孟萱
• Other Authors: Lee-Yan Sheen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/74010890179994886407

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 食品科技研究所 === 103 === Garlic (Allium sativum L.) has been used as both food and medicine for thousands of years. Garlic is listed as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Recent studies found that biological activities are attributed to the organosulfur compounds in garlic. Garlic essential oil (GEO) is typically obtained by steam distillation the yield is around 0.2-0.5%. Many epidemiologic studies report that consumption of GEO (0.25 mg/kg bw/day) can reduce the cardiovascular disease and coronary arteriosclerosis, by decreasing the serum cholesterol and triglyceride level. Although, garlic has been widely used, it is commonly known that excessive consumption of garlic may cause some side effects, including diarrhea, gastrointestinal damage, reduced serum protein, anemia, anticoagulant etc. However, the GEO safety data has not been established. Nowadays, there are an increase of using garilic and supplementary products, thus, it is important and urgent to assess the GEO safety. The hypothesis of this study is GEO may not cause animal subacute toxicity and genotoxicity hazard under the efficacy dosage and intake recommendations. The aim of this study is to evaluate the genotoxicty, animal acute, and subacute toxicity of GEO through Ames, chromosome aberration, micronucleus and animal test. The Ames test results indicted that GEO in 0.05, 0.1, 0.125, 0.25, and 0.5 mg/plate doses, did not cause Salmonella typhimurium TA98, TA100, TA102, TA1535, and TA1537 mutant. The results also demonstrated that at 1, 1.5, 2.5, 5, and 10 µg/ml of GEO did not cause the increasemet of CHO-K1 cells chromosome aberration rate. Under the safety factor of 60, 100, and 200 times of recommended intake dose (0.25 mg/kg bw/day) of the GEO (15, 25, and 50 mg/kg bw/day) did not cause ICR mice peripheral blood micronucleus generation rate increase after 24 and 48 hours. In addition, GEO at dose 15, 25, and 50 mg/kg bw/day did not affect abnormal behavior, body weight, food intake, water intake, and histopathological analysis of organ tissue in ICR mice. Futhermore, no significant abnormal finding in blood biological parameter values in ICR mice. In conclusion, GEO did not cause genotoxicity, and the no-observed-adverse-effect level for GEO derived from the results of the present study was considered to be greater than 50 mg/kg bw/day.