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Ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea L.), a member of the Lamiacea family, has been used in folk medicine for generations. The aim of the present study was to evaluate in vivo genotoxicity of the water extract of ground ivy and to determine whether there was an effect on hematological and biochemical parameters of blood. The experiment involved 12 Sprague Dawley rats, divided into 4 groups – 2 control groups (female and male) and 2 experimental groups (female and male) which were treated per os with ground ivy extract at a dose of 200 mg of freeze-dried extract per kg of rat for 14 days. The care and use of the experimental animals were in accordance with Croatian animal welfare laws and guidelines. All animals survived the experiments and their white blood, liver and kidney cells were subjected to alkaline comet assay in which tail length and intensity of DNA were determined. According to the obtained results there were no evidence of genotoxic activity after exposure to the ground ivy extract. The detected hematological and biochemical blood parameters did not indicate any adverse effect of the ground ivy extract.

Bioactive diversity and the economic accessibility of plant species have been the main factors for their integration into human diet and lifestyle since ancient times. In the last decade, the popularization of a healthy lifestyle along with increased consumption of phytochemicals from sources of natural origin has notably supported the trend of developing functional food products with the aim of preventing various health diseases. Arising from the presence of polyphenols as noteworthy carriers of bioactive potential, T. montanum and G.hederacea from the Lamiaceae family represent insufficiently explored aromatic plants. In the scope of integrating sustainable and “clean” solutions in food processing, multiple response modeling of microwave- assisted extraction (MAE) of bioactive compounds from T. montanum and G.hederacea was conducted. In order to determine the optimal extraction conditions, independent variables- temperature (50, 70 and 90 °C), time (3, 6 and 9 min) and solid-to- solvent ratio (1:100, 1:40 and 1:25 g/mL) were defined. The influence of process parameters was monitored by response factors, i.e. total phenolic content (TPC) and antioxidant capacity applying ABTS (2, 2′-azino-bis(3- ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) radical scavenging assay. Correlation between predicted and experimental values, as well as, the fit of statistical parameters for both plant species implied the reliability of each proposed regression model. Hence, a significant dependence of temperature and, both temperature and the solid-to-solvent ratio, was determined on the final extraction yield for T.montanum and G.hederacea, respectively. For achieving maximum TPC and antioxidant capacity, optimum conditions and predicted results were defined as follows: 70 °C, 6.00 min, 1:40 g/mL for T.montanum (TPC: 696.34 mg GAE/L, ABTS: 3.18 mmol TroloxE/L) and 90 °C, 8.84, 1:25 g/mL for G.hederacea (TPC: 1468.37 mg GAE/L, ABTS: 7.43 mmol TroloxE/L). This approach to extraction modeling has proven to be effective for defining the significance of process variables and their interactions to maximize extraction yield and cost- effectiveness.