Antinociceptive Effect of Essential Oils and Their Constituents: an Update Review

Abstract

Plants and essential oils (EOs) have been used for centuries in folk medicine to treat diverse disorders, including analgesic to pain relief. In this context, the antinociceptive activity of EOs has been attracted attention since the management of pain continues being a major challenge for medicine. This review provides an overview of published reports on the antinociceptive activity of EOs and their constituents from 2000 until the first half of 2015. In this review are compiled the data on the antinociceptive activity of 63 EOs and 26 of their constituents with a discussion about the nociception model used to access the analgesic effect. These data were also analyzed in relation to ethnopharmacological and toxicological data available in the literature. As can be seen by the analysis of more than 300 articles, EOs and their constituents show antinociceptive effects in different models and their action mechanism is quite variable. Although there are a few essential oils or their isolated constituents on the phytopharmaceuticals market, this review intends to put in evidence the often-underexploited vast source of natural compounds with therapeutic potential in pain relief.