In the last few decades, we have been massively confronted with the emergence of hormone disruptors that can affect the hormonal balance in humans and are responsible for various diseases. The methods in silico are first used to identify potential hormone disruptors. At the same time, the use of essential oils is increasing due to the desire for an alternative way of treating diseases and alternative skin care. It is therefore important to evaluate the potential effect of essential oil ingredients on the endocrine system, first with methods in silico. In our thesis we have focused on 30 essential oils that are often used both in pharmacy and cosmetology. We have provided general toxicological data of the investigated essential oils and found studies from the field of endocrine toxicity. We have found examples of endocrine toxicity studies for the essential oils of tea tree and lavender. When evaluating the binding to nuclear receptors, we selected the ingredients (namely 64 of them) appearing in concentrations higher than 10% in the essential oils, since the ingredients that are present in the highest concentrations are generally responsible for their effect. We have investigated the probability of binding of the ingredients to 12 nuclear receptors with the freely accessible program Endocrine Disruptome (ED). The results are presented in the form of a colour scale. The ED ranks all 64 selected compounds in the middle binding class for the interaction with the androgen receptor in the antagonist form (AR an) and for 21 of them, predicts the probability of interaction with other receptors. We classified these 21 compounds according to their chemical structure and acquired their toxicological data. In the TEDX database, only two compounds were found on the list of potential hormone disruptors, which ED identified from the set of ingredients for the possibility of interactions with endocrine receptors. The results of ED are not consistent with the studies listed in this database.The probability of binding to endocrine receptors that we obtained with the ED points to the potential endocrine activity of the main components of essential oils. Therefore, we cannot claim that essential oils are completely safe for use, which is in some cases also confirmed by studies, and must be used in prescribed concentrations. The efficacy of predicting the binding affinity could be confirmed first by in vitro testing on cell lines that have expressed individual nuclear receptors, followed by more complex in vivo tests to fully assess the potential endocrine activity of these compounds.
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