Artemisia absinthium (wormwood) and Salvia sp. (sage) are used as additives to pharmaceuticals, food and alcoholic beverages while in Greece both herbs are also consumed as infusions. The compounds α- and β-thujone, are monoterpenes, which are found in various preparations of these herbs. According to organizations (EMA, SCF) and clinical studies, α- and β-thujone have shown neurotoxic effects in humans over established limits. In this study wormwoodandsageinfusions were investigated in terms of the relative % content of the volatile constituents and the concentrations of α- and β-thujone by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). In sage infusions, α-thujone was the predominant isomer while in wormwood β-thujone was dominated. Our results revealed that most of the above herbal infusions exceed thujone limits as set by EMA, which are 3 mg/day for wormwood and 5 mg/day for sage. Furthermore, the average toxicity as performed by the Microtox® Analyzer showed higher levels of toxicity in sage infusions compared to the wormwood. No correlation was found between thujone content and toxicity levels of both sage and wormwood infusions.

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