The results of the latest research on, inter alia, new uses of essential oils or human scent as an indicator of the health condition will be presented at the XNUMXth National Symposium of Natural and Synthetic Fragrance and Cosmetic Products, which begins in Łódź on Wednesday.
The fragrance symposiums were launched in 1996. Every few years scientists from all over the country present new research results on natural and synthetic fragrances, food flavors, plant extracts as well as raw materials and cosmetic products, concerning their isolation, synthesis, composition analysis or determination of biological properties. and applications in products of various purposes.
One of the main topics of the symposium is essential oils – volatile mixtures of chemical compounds that occur naturally in plants in very small amounts – up to a few percent maximum. They give plants a fragrance, and the separated ones are used as additives to cosmetics, food and pharmaceutical products, and in aromatherapy.
Essential oils – apart from fragrances – exhibit biological properties, e.g. healing, antimicrobial, antioxidant, cytotoxic, herbicidal.
Currently, new applications of essential oils or individual components isolated from oils, which contain from several dozen to several hundred ingredients in various amounts, are being sought, told PAP Prof. Danuta Kalemba from the Institute of Food Chemistry, Lodz University of Technology.
According to specialists, new research directions concern, inter alia, the use of essential oils in biocidal products designed to control pests, to repel insects, or to interact with each other. Scientists are also studying the cytotoxic properties of some essential oils and their effects on normal human cells and cancer.
One of the topics of this year’s symposium will be human smell and sensitivity as an indicator of health. As emphasized by prof. Kalemba, man also produces different fragrances and may smell different depending on what diseases he is plagued with.
Research is being carried out on the use of man-made volatile compounds in medical diagnostics. Volatile compounds can be biological markers and help diagnose and follow the course of disease and treatment. There are many diseases, such as diabetes or some forms of cancer, which cause a person to emit certain volatile chemical compounds that we can analyze and thus monitor the patient’s condition – she explained.
The symposium will last until Friday. Its organizer is a research team from the Institute of Food Chemistry at the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Sciences of the Lodz University of Technology. As part of the studies at this faculty, there is a specialization in Food Flavors and Cosmetic Raw Materials, and a new field of study will be opened in the new academic year – Cosmetics Technology.