Metabolomics Research On Anxiolytic Effect Of Aerial Diffusion Of Essential Oils

Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent psychiatric disorders and affect a greatnumber of people worldwide. Essential oils, take effects through inhalation or topicalapplication, are believed to enhance physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.Although clinical studies suggest that the use of essential oils may have therapeuticpotential, evidence for the efficacy of essential oils in treating medical conditionsremains poor, with a particular lack of studies employing rigorous analytical methodsthat capture its identifiable impact on human biology.In this dissertation, it is the first time to apply metabonomics method to study theanxiolytic effect of essential oils and reveal the aromas-induced metabolic changes.We examined the metabolites of different bio-samples, including samples of humenand Wistar rats using GC-TOF/MS&UPLC/Q-TOF-MS, and carried out statisticalanalysis of the data.Main methods and results:1. It reveals the aromas-induced metabolic changes and the anxiolytic effect ofaromas in elevated plus maze (EPM) induced anxiety model rats. The significantalteration of metabolites in the EPM group was attenuated by aromas treatment,concurrent with the behavioral improvement with significantly increased openarms time and open arms entries.2. We examined the metabolites of urine samples of humen before and after10-daysmelling aroma of essential oils, combined with the result of Symptom Checklist90. The results show that using the unsupervised PCA method can hardly get aseparation trend. It can be clearly observed in the metabolic profile of thedifferences between the two group using PLS-DA method. From the GC&UPLCcombined metabolomics results, it was found some people’s metabolic profileswere not changed much after aromatherapy while others were significantly altered.There are29important differences in metabolite relating to anxiety and the metabolic path changes including energy metabolism, amino acid metabolism,organic acid metabolism and glu flora metabolism.3. Using gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography mass spectrometry(GC-MS) combined with Temperature-programmed retention indices onessential oil composition analysis. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of34kinds of compounds, the relative content of92.81%, which is the main componentof alcohols, esters, terpenes34.14%27.77%26.27%respectively.This study demonstrates, for the first time, that the metabonomics approach cancapture the subtle metabolic changes resulting from exposure to essential oils andprovide the basis for pinpointing affected pathways in anxiety-related behavior, whichwill lead to an improved mechanistic understanding of anxiolytic effect of essentialoils.