Antioxidant and Biological Properties of Plant Extracts

Herbs and spices, with well-known antioxidant activity, are used to prolong the shelf life of fresh and manufactured foods, preserving their quality and safety. For thousands of years, extracts and essential oils recovered from herbs and spices have also been used in folk medicine to limit those pathology-associated cell damages linked to a dis-balance of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, which might allow the occurrence of inflammatory and dis-metabolic and cardiovascular diseases and, in some cases, concur with the onset of some tumor forms. They are used to fight against attacking and resistant pathogenic microorganisms, bacteria, fungi, and viruses, whose higher resistance to conventional drugs represents a dramatic problem for human health. In recent decades, the role of such antioxidants has also been investigated for their protective action in combating and curing ulcers in the gastrointestinal tract, so that they may possibly represent good therapeutic agents for the development of new phytotherapeutic medicine with antioxidant activity for the treatment of such pathologies. Thus, due to such a vast "portfolio" of beneficial effects, extracts and essential oils from herbs and spices are always interesting fields of research. In addition, it must be taken into account that waste products can also represent a precious source of antioxidants. We invite you to contribute your latest research findings or a review article to this Special Issue, which will bring together current research and critical thinking on the different actions exhibited by extracts or essential oils with ascertained antioxidant activity on the abovementioned critical situations.