Systematic review: essential oils in dementia

Managing behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia ( BPSD ) can be distressing to both patients and the care givers. To combat this problem, aromatherapy is gaining momentum as a complementary therapy with the mainstream medicine in treating BPSD. Aromatherapy is one of the fastest growing of all the complementary therapies for dementia. Aromatherapy shows potential as a complementary therapy in treating BPSD ,which includes a symptom of agitation, restlessness, sleep disturbances and anxiety that occur in the dementia patients. The use of antipsychotic drugs can be risky as they show a number of side effects. The example of side effects projected by these antipsychotic drugs are such as blurred vision, dry mouth, weight gain and tremors. The use of aromatherapy by using essential oil can be relatively safe because the essential oils produced from the extraction from parts of the plants such as the flowers , barks, stems and leaves. Examples of plants used in are such as lavender, chamomile, lemon balm or also known as melisa balm oil, basil, coriander, lemon and neroli. The objective of this project is to systematically review the research articles regarding the use of essential oils in managing dementia. Articles were searched through the search engine such as PubMed, Science Direct and Scopus. The search terms used were 'aromatherapy', 'dementia' ,'aromatherapy for dementia' and 'essential oils'. The inclusion criteria that included in the searching process are 'randomized and non-randomized controlled trials', 'papers published between 2000 until 2016' and 'English language paper'. The quality of the retrieved articles were assessed by using PRISMA tool. The two most widely used essential oils are lavender oil and lemon balm oil. 7 studies showed that lavender