Chemical Constituents, Antimicrobial, Cytotoxicity, Mutagenic and Antimutagenic Effects of Artemisia ciniformis

The aim of this study was to determine the chemical constituents, antimicrobial, cytotoxicity, mutagenic and anti-mutagenic activities of the essential oil of Artemisia ciniformis Krasch. & Popov ex Poljakov, against important bacterial pathogens and human cells which were unknown before. In vitro cytotoxicity was measured using a modified MTT assay on normal human lymphocytes and tumor HeLa cells. The mutagenic and antimutagenic activities of the oil were evaluated using the Salmonella typhimurium tester strains TA98 and TA100, together with nitrofluorene for TA98 and sodium azide for TA100 without (-S9) metabolic activation, and 2-aminoantracene for TA98 and TA100 with metabolic (+S9) activation. Oxygenated monoterpenes especially camphor (30.21 %), 1,8-cineole (23.7 %) and trans-Pinocarveol (12.28 %) were the major components of the oil of A. ciniformis. Bactericidal kinetics of this oil indicated that Acinetobacter baumannii is the most vulnerable one (MIC = 0.02 mg/ml, MBC = 0.04 mg/ml, Dvalue = 3.57 min). The oil displayed an excellent cytotoxic action toward the human tumor cell line (IC50 = 19.64 µg/ml). The oil of A. ciniformis showed excellent antimutagenicity effect on the 2-nitrofluorene, in the strain of S. typhimurium TA98, without the presence of metabolic activation.