Vol 14, Issue 5, 2021 Online - 2455-3891 Print - 0974-2441 WOUND HEALING ACTIVITY OF LEMON PEPPER ESSENTIAL OIL IN BURN WOUND OF WISTAR RAT 1 Magister Program of Biomedical Sciences, Universitas Prima Indonesia, Medan, Indonesia. 2 Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Prima Indonesia, North Sumatera, Indonesia. 3 Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Prima Indonesia, Medan, Indonesia. Email: dewipurnama.unpri@gmail.com Received: 25 March 2021, Revised and Accepted: 05 May 2021 ABSTRACT Objective: The purpose of the study was to investigate the acceleration of the wound healing properties from lemon pepper’s essential oil as the lemon pepper’s ointment. Methods: There were 20 Wistar rats as an animal trial divided into four sample groups, including control (ointment base), standard (Nebacetin ® ), 5% lemon pepper, and 10% lemon pepper ointment, and all groups were injured by electric soldier for 10 s. The wound contraction and epithelialization period were the parameters of wound healing activity. Result: Wound contraction as the parameter of wound healing showed significant difference between the standard and lemon pepper ointment (p<0.05). The lemon pepper ointment groups showed no significant wound contraction difference in each lemon pepper ointment concentration at the initial time of observation, however, it become more obvious at last period of observation. Furthermore, the epithelialization period did not showed any significant differences between standard, 5% or 10% lemon pepper ointment against the control group (p>0.05). Conclusion: It can be concluded that the lemon pepper ointment had the potential to accelerate wound healing activity. Keywords: Epithelialization period, Lemon pepper, Ointment, Wound contraction. INTRODUCTION The most common and severe type of injuries is burn injury that leads to significant morbidity and mortality over the world. The case of burn is found high in the low and middle-income countries account for 90% of burn cases and around 5–12% of all types of injuries in the world. Furthermore, burn was fourth leading cause of injury after road traffic injuries, falls, and violence [1-3]. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) data, around 265,000 people die every year because of burn injuries. Around two- thirds of burn injuries were found in the African, East Mediterranean, and Southeast Asia regions. The East Mediterranean and Southeast Asia regions’ annual incidence rate is around 187 and 243/100,000. On the other hand, burn injury is the leading cause of disability-adjusted life- years lost in low- and middle-income countries [1,2]. Some studies have been performed to evaluate the incidence of burn injuries in Indonesia which have not been available yet. Health Ministry of Indonesia at 2007 as Basic Health Research reported that the burn wound’s prevalence was 2.2%. Even though, some local studies looked for incidence of burn injuries. One of them was Primadina research, who reported that 35 patients to suffer from burn in the plastic surgery department of Syarif Ambami Rato Ebhu Government Hospital during 2015–2016 that aged ranged from 41 years old to 60 years old [4]. Other studies performed by Suzan and Andayani who reported that the extended dehydration because of the burn injuries could cause some morbidities such as acute kidney injury, septic shock, liver function reduction, or amputation [5]. Due to these reasons, it was needed a novel drug or substance which promote acceleration the wound healing process, especially the burn wound, to improve the loss of disability-adjusted life-years and to reduce the number of burn injury. Several potential natural sources promote improvement the wound healing properties in Indonesia. Indonesia is a tropical region which enriched by various herbs. One of these was lemon pepper that has a scientific name as Zanthoxylum acanthopodium DC. None studies have been performed to explore the wound healing properties of lemon pepper. Nevertheless, some in vitro studies have been explored the phytochemical content and other pharmacology properties from crude extract activities of lemon pepper. Finally, this study was performed to investigate the health benefit of lemon pepper’s essential oil as the ointment to accelerate the burn wound healing process that used the Wistar rats as the animal trial. METHODS This study used pre-test and post-test only control group design as an experimental study in Riwandi Animal House during October 2019– November 2019. The lemon pepper fruit as the sample was obtained from a traditional market in the Medan, North Sumatera. This study has been approved by Health Research Ethics Committee from Universitas Prima Indonesia with registration no. 001/KEPK/UNPRI/IX/2020. The essential oil was obtained from the lemon pepper fruit by hydrodistillation methods. Amount of 600 g of fresh lemon pepper was distilled by distillation apparatus for 4 h at 80°C. Moreover, the distillate was precipitate by anhydrous sodium sulfate, then it was filtered, and the filtrate as the essential oil was collected. The essential oil volume and weight were documented to determine the yield by dividing the volume of obtained essential oil into the fresh lemon pepper mass and then multiple 100% [6]. On the other hand, the fresh lemon pepper was also screened for the phytochemical included flavonoid, tannin, alkaloid, phenol, steroid/ triterpenoid, terpenoid, and saponin [7,8]. Moreover, the essential oil of © 2021 The Authors. Published by Innovare Academic Sciences Pvt Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22159/ajpcr.2021v14i5.41598. Journal homepage: https://innovareacademics.in/journals/index.php/ajpcr Research Article DEWI PURNAMA 1 *, CHRISMIS NOVALINDA GINTING 2 , LINDA CHIUMAN 3 , ADRIAN KHU 2