NATURAL COFFEE AND ROSEMARY EXTRACTS AS TOPICAL FORMULATION PRESERVATIVES: AN ALTERNATIVE TO TRADITIONAL PRESERVATIVE SYSTEMS?

Abstract

This project seeks to develop a new system of natural preservatives, using coffee and rosemary extracts, to apply it in a pharmacopeic emulsion and compare its effectiveness with parabens. Parabens are preservatives widely used in the pharmaceutical industry, due to their broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity, compatibility with other ingredients and great cost-effectiveness. However, in recent years, studies have become popular that associate such preservatives with breast cancer, due to their estrogenicity. Even though the literature still cannot establish a conclusive study on the supposed threat of parabens to human health, more and more consumers are looking for topical formulations that are free of parabens and that use alternative preservatives. This, together with the growing demand for more natural products, establishes an opportunity for the use of plant species, which have antimicrobial action studied in the literature, as preservatives in topical formulations. Coffee (Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora) and rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) have antimicrobial properties due to their chemical components, in addition to the wide national production of the former and the antioxidant activity of the latter, and may be a good alternative for the use of parabens . In this project, tests of Minimum Inhibitory Concentration of microbial activity will be carried out for both extracts, in addition to a study on their synergy, with the checkerboard method. The formulation containing the extracts and the one containing only parabens will be submitted to stability tests, evaluation of rheological parameters, challenge test and their degradation residues will be characterized by mass spectrometry.