Traditional use, phytochemistry, toxicology, and pharmacology of Origanum majorana L.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jep.2020.113318Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Botanical description, description and traditional knowledge of Origanum majorana were explored.

  • Chemical composition of Origanum majorana extracts and essential oils was highlighted.

  • Toxicological evidences and pharmacological properties of Origanum majorana were explored.

  • Mechanism insights of some bioactive compounds of O. majorana were highlighted.

  • Future perspectives on the rational use of Origanum majorana were suggested.

Abstract

Ethnopharmacological relevance

Origanum majorana L., is an aromatic and medicinal plant distributed in different parts of Mediterranean countries. This species is widely used in traditional medicine for the treatment of many diseases such as allergies, hypertension, respiratory infections, diabetes, stomach pain, and intestinal antispasmodic.

Aim of the review

This work reports previous studies on O. majorana concerning its taxonomy, botanical description, geographical distribution, traditional use, bioactive compounds, toxicology, and biological effects.

Materials and methods

Different scientific data bases such as Web of Science, Scopus, Wiley Online, SciFinder, Google Scholar, PubMed, ScienceDirect, and SpringerLink were consulted to collect data about O. majorana. The presented data emphasis bioactive compounds, traditional uses, toxicological investigations, and biological activities of O. majorana.

Results

The findings of this work marked an important correlation between the traditional use of O. majorana as an anti-allergic, antihypertensive, anti-diabetic agent, and its biological effects. Indeed, pharmacological investigations showed that essential oils and extracts from O. majorana exhibit different biological properties, particularly; antibacterial, antifungal, antioxidant, antiparasitic, antidiabetic, anticancer, nephrotoxicity protective, anti-inflammatory, analgesic and anti-pyretic, hepatoprotective, and antimutagenic effects. Toxicological evaluation confirmed the safety and innocuity of this species and supported its medicinal uses. Several bioactive compounds belonging to different chemical family such as terpenoids, flavonoids, and phenolic acids were also identified in O. majorana.

Conclusions

The results suggest that the pharmacological properties of O. majorana confirm its traditional uses. Indeed, O. majorana essential oils showed remarkable antimicrobial, antioxidant, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antimutagenic, nephroprotective, and hepatoprotective activities. However, further investigations regarding the evaluation of molecular mechanisms of identified compounds against human cancer cell lines, inflammatory process, and microbial infections are needed to validate pharmacodynamic targets. The toxicological investigation of O. Majorana confirmed its safety and therefore encouraged pharmacokinetic evaluation tests to validate its bioavailability.

Introduction

Origanum majorana L. (Known as Sahtar or Zaatar in traditional medicine) currently named sweet marjoram, is a medicinal plant of the Lamiaceae family, a perennial herb of Origanum genus (Prerna and Vasudeva, 2015), with a self-supporting growth habit, it is a photoautotroph (Ietswaart, 1980). This plant is distributed around the Mediterranean regions, in particular, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Spain, and Portugal (Ietswaart, 1980).

In folk Moroccan medicine, marjoram is used as anti-cooling (Bellakhdar et al., 1991) against allergies, fever, flu, hypertension (Tahraoui et al., 2007; Benali et al., 2017), antipyretic (Bellakhdar et al., 1991), respiratory infections (Ennacerie et al., 2017), antidiabetic (Benkhnigue et al., 2014; El Hafian et al., 2014), menstrual pain, cold in the uterus, stomach pain, cough (Bouayyadi et al., 2015), rheumatism, headache, insomnia (Abouri et al., 2012), and used as intestinal antispasmodic (Hachi et al., 2015). Moreover, several previous works have demonstrated other ethnobotanical priorities of O. majorana L. such as the studies of El-Hilaly et al. (2003); El Abbouyi et al. (2014); Ouelbani et al. (2016); Alaoui and Laaribya (2017), and Zougagh et al. (2019).

Origanum majorana L. is rich in phytochemicals such as thymol, carvacrol, tannins, hydroquinone, arbutin, methyl arbutin, vitexin, orientin, thymonin, triacontan, sitosterol, cis-sabinene hydrate, limonene, terpinene, camphene and flavonoids like diosmetin, luteolin, and apigenin (Jelali et al., 2011; Guerra-Boone et al., 2015; Sefeer and Elumalai, 2018; Chaves et al., 2019), which explain its biological properties.

The pharmacological investigations of the methanol extracts and the essential oils of O. majorana have shown interesting biological activities (Fig. 1). In detail, an antibacterial property against different pathogenic bacteria such as Bacillus subtilis, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumonia, Salmonella choleraensius, Serratia sp., etc. (Busatta et al., 2008; Hajlaoui et al., 2016; Amor et al., 2019). The antibacterial action of OMEO bioactive compounds such as carvacrol and thymol involves several mechanisms including the increase of membrane permeability, the leakage of vital cell contents, and the inhibition quorum sensing (Xu et al., 2008). Moreover, O. majorana exhibited antifungal effects against pathogenic fungi like Aspergillus niger, Trichoderma viride, Penicillium cyclopium, Phytophthora infestants, Candida sp., etc. (Vagi et al., 2005; Hajlaoui et al., 2016; Della Pepa et al., 2019; Thanh et al., 2019). The antiparasitic properties of O. majorana, in particular, insecticidal (Barbouche et al., 2001) and larvicidal activities (El-Akhal et al., 2016; Chaves et al., 2019), have also been reported. Moreover, O. majorana was reported to exhibit antidiabetic activity (Pimple et al., 2012), nephrotoxicity protective effect (Soliman et al., 2016), anti-inflammatory, analgesic, and anti-pyretic actions (Seoudi et al., 2009). The antidiabetic properties of O. majorana phenolic compounds involve the increase of plasma insulin, the stimulation of hepatic glycogen synthesis, the increase of glucokinase activity, and the down-regulation of glucose-6-phosphatase (G6Pase) and phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PEPCK) (van Son et al., 2011). In addition, the hepatoprotective (Mossa et al., 2013), the antimutagenic (Qari, 2008), and the gastrointestinal effects were also reported (Khatab and Elhaddad, 2015). Moreover, the toxicological investigations have shown that O. majorana ethanolic extract is quietly safe (Seoudi et al., 2009). In addition, no mortalities were recorded for the ethanolic extract of O. majorana in rats according to the study of Selim et al. (2013).

This review was designed to explore all the studies about the O. majorana L. plant; taxonomy, botanical description, distribution, ethnobotanical priorities, all pharmacological investigations of the different parts of this plant, and we will summarize the list of all phytochemical components isolated and identified from the methanol extracts or from the essential oil of this plant. This article aims to provide a scientific basis for further studies and development of medicinal agents from O. majorana.

Section snippets

Research methodology

The literature on O. majorana botanical description, traditional uses, bioactive compounds, pharmacological effects, and toxicological evaluations were collected, analyzed and summarized in this review. Scientific search engines such as PubMed, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, Web of Science, Scopus, Wiley Online, Scifnder, and Google Scholar were used to collect all published articles about this species. Several terms were used as keywords such as Origanum majorana, Origanum majorana essential oils

Synonym and taxonomy

Origanum majorana Linnaeus. (ID: 268884), sweet marjoram as a common name, formerly known as Majorana hortensis Moench and as a heterotypic synonym known as Origanum dubium Boiss (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). Origanum majorana L. is a herbaceous species belongs to Lamiaceae family which is one out of 200 genera, tribe Mentheae, Origanum genus and Subgenus Majorana (Chishti et al., 2013). The genus consists of over 44 species, 6 subspecies, 3 botanical varieties, and 18 hybrids (Prerna and

Concluding remarks and future perspectives

Here, we highlighted a review about O. majorana concerning its taxonomy, description, distribution, medicinal use, bioactive compounds, pharmacological properties, and toxicological evidences. The data reported that this species is used in traditional medicine to treat different pathologies including microbial infections, inflammation, and diabetes. The phytochemical analysis using GC-MS, HPLC, LC-MS allowed the identification of numerous bioactive compounds, in particular, terpenoids

Authors’ contributions

Abdelhakim Bouyahya conceived the idea, provided guidance, resources, reviewed the article, wrote a part of the manuscript and structured the article as per the journal guidelines. Imane Chamkhi wrote a part of the manuscript, reviewed the article, designed the figures, the graphical abstract, cited the references as per the journal guidelines, and reviewed the final version of the article. Nawal El Menyiy organized the data and wrote a part of the manuscript. Fatima Ezzahrae Guaouguaou wrote a

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Declaration of competing interest

There was no conflict of interest between authors.

Acknowledgments

Not applicable.

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