In-vitro Approach for the Determination of Antioxidant and Anti-inflammatory Activity of Wild Marjoram (Thymus mastichina L.)

Carmen Asensio-Vegas¹, Manel Ben Khedim¹, Daniel Rico¹, Nigel Brunton², Dilip Rai³, Mohammad Hossain³ and Ana Belen Martin-Diana^1,

¹Agricultural Technological Institute of Castilla and Leon, Government of Castilla and Leon, Spain

²School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

³Department of Food Biosciences, Teagasc Food Research Centre Ashtown, Dublin 15, Ireland

Cite this paper:
Carmen Asensio-Vegas, Manel Ben Khedim, Daniel Rico, Nigel Brunton, Dilip Rai, Mohammad Hossain and Ana Belen Martin-Diana. In-vitro Approach for the Determination of Antioxidant and Anti-inflammatory Activity of Wild Marjoram (Thymus mastichina L.). Journal of Food and Nutrition Research. 2018; 6(12):731-739. doi: 10.12691/jfnr-6-12-3

Abstract

In the present study, it was investigated the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties of marjoram extracts and identified the major phenolic compounds which that may be responsible for these properties. Extracts of T. mastichina exhibited high antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity. Methanol extracts showed higher antioxidant activity in comparison with ethanol and water extracts. The total phenolic content (195.71 ± 4.07 GAE/g dry extract) and the DPPH free radical scavenging activity (58.85 ± 0.52 g Trolox/100 g of dry weight extract) showed higher antioxidant activity than marjoram from the Portuguese region and an EC₅₀ (0.028 mg/mL) superior to the synthetic antioxidant (BHT). T. mastichina was found to be a strong semicarbazide (SSAO) inhibitor with an EC₅₀ one thousand times stronger than SSAO. Among polyphenols, flavonoids, mainly luteolin and quercetin, were the major constituents of the plant extracts and were present at levels of 6.22 and 5.46 μg kaempferol/mg DWE, respectively.

Keywords:
marjoram polyphenols antioxidant anti-inflammatory

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