eng Science and Education Publishing Journal of Food and Nutrition Research 2333-1240 2018-12-19 6 12 731 739 10.12691/jfnr-6-12-3 JFNR20186123 article Carmen Asensio-Vegas 1 Manel Ben Khedim 1 Daniel Rico 1 Nigel Brunton 2 Dilip Rai 3 Mohammad Hossain 3 Ana Belen Martin-Diana mardiaan@itacyl.es 3 Agricultural Technological Institute of Castilla and Leon, Government of Castilla and Leon, Spain School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland Department of Food Biosciences, Teagasc Food Research Centre Ashtown, Dublin 15, Ireland 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. http://pubs.sciepub.com/jfnr/6/12/3/jfnr-6-12-3.pdf marjoram polyphenols antioxidant anti-inflammatory