Abstract This study aimed to investigate the biological activity of essential oils (EOs) of Artemisia abrotanum , Lavandula dentata , Cymbopogon citratus and Laurus nobilis as anti-inflammatory and cancer chemopreventive activities. The anti-inflammatory activity was evaluated using lipopolysaccharides-induced nitric oxide (NO) inhibition on murine macrophage cells (RAW264.7) and cancer chemo-preventive influence was assessed in vitro utilizing Hepa1c1c7 murine carcinoma cells. The EO of A. abrotanum has the most potential activity toward inhibition of NO release, recording 96.6 ± 0.1%, as estimated by Greiss assay. Followed by EOs of L. dentata and L. nobilis with 63.6 ± 0.11 and 37.0 ± 0.23%, respectively. At the protein expression level, western blotting technique was used to evaluate the expression of iNOS. The EO of A. abrotanum at 100 µg/ml exhibited a very high impact on inhibiting iNOS expression, followed by EOs of L. dentata and L. nobilis . On the other hand, pre-screening concentration (100 µg/ml) revealed that the EOs of L. dentata and A. abrotanum have moderate potency to induce expression of chemo-preventive marker NQO1. The results revealed that the EO of A. abrotanum had strong anti-inflammatory activity. While the EOs of L. dentata and A. abrotanum have moderate potency to induce cancer chemoprevention.
Ali et al. (2026) studied this question.