Many factors such as the cost of antineoplastic
drugs, side effects, development of drug resistance and treatment failure are
driving researchers and cancer patients to new therapeutic areas. One of these
new popular areas of interest is aromatherapy, which is derived from nature and
described as ‘medicinal plants’. Peppermint (Mentha piperita), a member of the
Lamiaceae family, is one of the medicinal plants that have been used in
medicine for thousands of years. Traditionally used in the treatment of
respiratory and gastrointestinal system diseases, infectious diseases and pain,
studies on the anticancer properties of peppermint are at the level of cellular
and animal experiments. In most of the studies, cytotoxic, antiproliferative and
antitumor effects of peppermint on cancer cell lines have been demonstrated.
There are studies on the chemoradioprotective effects of peppermint, some of
which are at the level of animal experiments, and some of which have been
conducted on a limited number of patients. In these studies, peppermint
extracts have been shown to reduce chemotherapy-induced symptoms such as
nausea, vomiting, retching, oral mucositis; to be effective in eliminating
gastrointestinal, hematopoietic, urogenital and chromosomal damage caused by
radiotherapy and to improve quality of life. Despite all these studies, there
is no therapeutic agent study on peppermint and its extracts developed as
monotherapy or combination against any cancer or chemotherapy/radiotherapy side
effects.
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