Mele Elisa
Materials Department, Loughborough University, Epinal Way, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK.
Polymers (Basel). 2020 Apr 14;12(4):908. doi: 10.3390/polym12040908.
The extensive and sometimes unregulated use of synthetic chemicals, such as drugs, preservatives, and pesticides, is posing big threats to global health, the environment, and food security. This has stimulated the research of new strategies to deal with bacterial infections in animals and humans and to eradicate pests. Plant extracts, particularly essential oils, have recently emerged as valid alternatives to synthetic drugs, due to their properties which include antibacterial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and insecticidal activity. This review discusses the current research on the use of electrospinning to encapsulate essential oils into polymeric nanofibres and achieve controlled release of these bioactive compounds, while protecting them from degradation. The works here analysed demonstrate that the electrospinning process is an effective strategy to preserve the properties of essential oils and create bioactive membranes for biomedical, pharmaceutical, and food packaging applications.
合成化学品，如药物、防腐剂和杀虫剂的广泛使用，有时甚至是无节制使用，正给全球健康、环境和食品安全带来巨大威胁。这激发了人们对处理动物和人类细菌感染以及根除害虫新策略的研究。植物提取物，尤其是精油，由于其具有抗菌、抗真菌、抗炎、抗氧化和杀虫活性等特性，最近已成为合成药物的有效替代品。本综述讨论了目前关于使用静电纺丝将精油封装到聚合物纳米纤维中并实现这些生物活性化合物的控释，同时保护它们不被降解的研究。这里分析的研究表明，静电纺丝过程是一种有效的策略，可保留精油的特性，并为生物医学、制药和食品包装应用制备生物活性膜。
