Pulegone

Pulegone is an oxygenated monoterpene ketone

Pulegone occurs in some essential oils. When the name appears in a cannabis-related report, it identifies a chemical constituent under that report’s method. It does not tell you that the sample is a prescribed medicine or that a clinical effect has been established.

Human liver tissue was tested outside the body

A primary ex vivo study exposed precision-cut liver slices from five people to R-pulegone. The compound was toxic in the tested human liver-slice model, with marked variation between samples. This is human tissue evidence under laboratory conditions, not a clinical risk threshold for a person using a cannabis product.

The animal toxicology used defined oral exposures

A separate study gave pulegone to laboratory mice in acute and chronic oral-toxicity groups. Researchers recorded behavioural, weight, biochemical, genetic and histological findings. Those results belong to the specified mouse exposures. They do not provide a human safety estimate or establish what happens with a labelled cannabis formulation.

A label entry is not a safety threshold

If a report lists pulegone, the relevant record includes the amount, method, batch and complete product. The NHS medical-cannabis information explains the separate prescribed context. Neither it nor the toxicology studies supports a treatment claim, a safe threshold for a cannabis product or a prediction of an individual’s risk.

Related conditions

• Migraine and headache
• Chronic pain

Sources

• Inter-individual variability in acute toxicity of R-pulegone in human liver slices (primary human ex vivo cell/tissue toxicology study, PMID 29921785, DOI 10.3390/ijms19061805).
• Pulegone and eugenol oral supplementation in laboratory animals (primary animal toxicology study, PMID 36289857, DOI 10.3390/biomedicines10102595).