Rosemary is commonly used as a spice and a flavoring agent in food processing. Although the antioxidative properties of its extracts have been investigated, there have been few reports on the volatile components of rosemary. We designed a novel antioxidative system which can generate the volatile constituents in the gaseous phase from a rosemary extract and evaluated the gaseous antioxidative activities against both lipid peroxidation and cell death induced by nitrogen dioxide and ultraviolet radiation. The antioxidative effects of the major volatile components on the oxidation of linoleic acid induced by azo compounds were also investigated in a solution.
The volatile components in the novel antioxidative system suppressed the Jurkat cell death induced by nitrogen dioxide and the intracellular formation of reactive oxygen species in fibroblast cells induced by ultraviolet radiation. 1,8-Cineole among the volatile components exerted an antioxidative effect against the oxidation of linoleic acid in a solution induced by azo compounds and ultraviolet radiation. These data suggest that the volatile constituents of a rosemary extract had antioxidative properties and that gaseous exposure antioxidant is a promising method for promoting health.

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