丁香酚是一种苯丙素化合物，存在于各种膳食资源和药用植物中。从历史的角度来看，丁子香酚作为调味剂广泛应用于食品和香料行业。在此，本综述主要关注丁子香酚在健康和疾病中的多种生理作用的最新进展，并讨论其机制。新的证据强调，丁子香酚在癌症、糖尿病、肥胖、心血管疾病和神经退行性疾病中表现出多种生物活性。它还具有镇痛、抗炎和抗氧化作用，对多种病毒、细菌、真菌和寄生虫具有致死或抑制作用。该手稿还包含一些迄今为止已申请的有关丁子香酚生产和应用的专利。总的来说，这些好处使丁子香酚成为一种有前途的营养补充剂，它履行了其作为调味剂的历史功能，为创造治疗疾病的治疗剂开辟了新的可能性。

Eugenol, a phenylpropanoid compound, is found in various dietary resources and medicinal plants. From a historical perspective, eugenol is widely employed as a flavoring agent in the food and fragrance industries. Here, this review mainly focuses on recent advances in eugenol with respect to its versatile physiological roles in health and disease and discusses the mechanisms. Emerging evidence has highlighted that eugenol exhibits multiple biological activities in cancer, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases. It also has analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant qualities and has lethal or inhibiting effects on various viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites. The manuscript also contains some patents that have been filed thus far regarding the production and application of eugenol. Overall, these benefits make eugenol a promising nutritional supplement which fulfils its historical function as a flavoring agent, opening up new possibilities for the creation of therapeutic agents for the treatment of disease.