Toxic Activity and Chemical Composition of Lithuanian Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium L.) Essential Oils

Asta Judzentiene (1) , Jurga Budiene (1) , Renata Gircyte (1) , Veronique Masotti (2) , Isabelle Laffont-Schwob (2)

1 Center for Physical Sciences and Technology, Institute of Chemistry
2 IMEP - Institut Méditerranéen d'Ecologie et de Paléoécologie

Toxicity tests of wild wormwood essential oils were performed using the brine shrimp (Artemia sp.) test. Nauplii lethality (LC 50) ranged 15.7-31.9 µg/mL, depending on oil composition. The most toxic A. absinthium oils were found to be those containing appreciable amount of trans-sabinyl acetate (45.2%) and (cis+trans) thujones (12.3%), while other samples with equivalent amounts of sabinyl acetate, but without thujones were determined to be notably less toxic. Herb material for the tests was collected in Lithuania, the volatile oils were obtained by hydrodistillation from different plant organs (inflorescences and leaves) and analysed by GC-MS.

Keywords: Artemisia absinthium; Essential oil composition; GC-MS; Trans-sabinyl acetate; (cis-trans) thujones; (Z)-epoxy-ocimene; Brine shrimp lethality test

Domains: Biodiversity and Ecology; Chemical Sciences

Asta Judzentiene, Jurga Budiene, Renata Gircyte, Veronique Masotti, Isabelle Laffont-Schwob. Toxic Activity and Chemical Composition of Lithuanian Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium L.) Essential Oils. Records of Natural Products, 2012, 6, pp.180 - 183. ⟨hal-02095676⟩