**8. Conclusion**

Essential oils can represent a precious mine to fight pathogenic microorganisms, in particular to counteract the communication mechanisms that allow them to trigger those processes leading to their greater virulence and danger, in the hospital, environmental, and food sectors. However, *in vivo* studies remain crucial to evaluating the potential of this strategy as a mean to treat antibiotic-resistant infections, and profounder understanding of the mechanism of action is required. Finally, in the case of the association EOs-antibiotics, the preliminary evaluation of the *in vitro* toxicity of EO-antibiotic combinations is needed prior to in vivo studies indeed.

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**Author details**

Filomena Nazzaro1

Hermosillo, Mexico

Ponta Grossa, Brazil

Fernando Jesus Ayala-Zavala3

\*, Florinda Fratianni1

1 Institute of Food Science, CNR-ISA, Avellino, Italy

University of Molise, Campobasso, Italy

provided the original work is properly cited.

*Essential Oils and Microbial Communication DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85638*

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

, Antonio d'Acierno1

, Adriano Gomez da Cruz4

2 DiAAA, Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Sciences,

4 Department of Food Engineering, State University of Ponta Grossa (UEPG),

5 Department of Pharmacy, University of Salerno, Fisciano (Salerno), Italy

3 Center for Research in Nutrition and Development (CIAD AC),

\*Address all correspondence to: filomena.nazzaro@cnr.it

, Raffaele Coppola<sup>2</sup>

and Vincenzo De Feo5

,
