Protective effect of lavender essential oils on depression and multi-organ stress

Introduction: Lavender essential oils (LEO) have been known to have relaxing effects, improve mood, and treat anxiety, but the effect on multiple organ stress concurrently is unknown. This multiorgan stress is related to depression can be caused by chronic psychological stress due to excessive cortisol levels and can lead to organ damage. This study analyzed LEO in preventing depression and multiorgan failure using intraperitoneal injection of corticosteroids in animal-model. Methods: Rats (Rattus norvegicus) Wistar strain, male, aged 7-8 weeks were involved in this study. Depression in animal-model is defined by immobilization using tail suspension test and anhedonia using sucrose preference test. LEO 5% was diluted in virgin coconut oils as vehicle. Serum cortisol was analyzed using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Organs were extracted and processed using hematoxylin eosin staining. Results: The results of this study indicate that LEO was able to prevent damage to the glial cells, myocardiac cells, and gastrointestinal mast cells infiltration, but not to the hepatocytes and renal cells damage. LEO also induced behavioral activation as improvement of depression, but anhedonia was still remained. Conclusion: The effect of LEO is to prevent the increase in blood cortisol levels, thus reduce the reactivity of depressed individuals to stress, although the individual still has anhedonia as a residual symptoms.