Investigation on chemical composition, antimicrobial, antioxidant, and cytotoxic properties of essential oil from Dracocephalum kotschyi Boiss

Background: Dracocephalum kotschyi Boiss is a herb with wide-spread applications. Lorestan traditional healers have applied it for the treatment of rheumatoid diseases and stomach disorders.Materials and methods: Hydrodistillation process was used for essential oil extraction, the extracted essential oil was then analyzed through combination of capillary GC–FID, GC–MS and RI. The in vitro antimicrobial, antioxidant and cytotoxic activities of this essential oil were examined. Results indicate that the essential oil has a broad range of antimicrobial activity against all of the tested microorganisms.Results: The 50% of cytotoxic concentrations was 26.4 μg/ml and 4266.7 μg/ml for Hela cells and human lymphocytes, respectively. The oil cytotoxicity against the human tumor cell line was far higher than the amount required for human healthy cells. Conversely, the essential oil’s IC50 value of 49.2 μg/ml in the DPPH assay, could be regarded as its strong antioxidant potential.Conclusion: According to the data obtained, it can be concluded that D. kotschyi essential oil could be applied as a safe antibacterial and antioxidant agent for food and pharmaceutical purposes.Keywords: Antimicrobial, Antioxidant, Dracocephalum kotschyi Boiss, Cytotoxicity, Essential oi

Antibacterial activity native medicinal plants extracts in Lorestan, Iran

Background & Objective: There is an increasing interests in substitution of natural products for synthetic chemicals in drugs and foodstuff. Reports of antibiotic resistant bacteria and side effects of chemical food preservatives suspected to be carcinogenic have drawn attention towards application of herbal and natural substances. Towards this end, edible plants are more safe and therefor have priority for investigation. In this study, antibacterial activities of six medicinal plants including Thymus (T.) eriocalyx and T. persicus, Allium (A.) haementhaides, Fumaria (F.) parviflora Lam, Buxus (B.) hyrecana pojark, and Tragopon (Tr.) carcifolus Lorestan province in Iran were examined. Materials & Methods: In this study, flowers and leaves from T.persicus, T. eriocalyx, and leaves from other plants were collected from Zagros highlands, dried and soaked in hexan for 48. The solvent was separated then evaporated under reduced pressure. The concentrated extracts were shaken and foze at -10°C. Then it was centrifuged and the solvent was evaporated. The extracts were finally resuspended in sterile PBS containing DMSO. Antibacterial activities were examined by disk diffusion and broth microdillution technique , using standard (ATCC) gram positive and negative bacteria and standard (Muller Hinton agar and broth or Isosensitest agar) media in order to determine Minimum Inhibitory (MIC) or Bactericidal (MBC) concentration. Results: Strong antibacterial activities were observed against both gram positive and negative bacteria including E.coli, S. aureous and P. aeroginosa by T.eriocalyx and F. parviflora. Also B. hyrecana pojark showed antibacterial activity against S. aureus at a concentration of MIC=320 µg/ml and MBC=80 µg/ml. Conclusion: This study showed that T.eriocalyx, F. parviflora and B. hyrecana pojark have antibacterial effects in vitro. Therefore it is suggested the application of these extract in medicine and food industings could be helpful

INVESTIGATION ON CHEMICAL COMPOSITION, ANTIMICROBIAL, ANTIOXIDANT, AND CYTOTOXIC PROPERTIES OF ESSENTIAL OIL FROM DRACOCEPHALUM KOTSCHYI BOISS

Background: Dracocephalum kotschyi Boiss is a herb with wide-spread applications. Lorestan traditional healers have applied it for the treatment of rheumatoid diseases and stomach disorders. Materials and methods: Hydrodistillation process was used for essential oil extraction, the extracted essential oil was then analyzed through combination of capillary GC–FID, GC–MS and RI. The in vitro antimicrobial, antioxidant and cytotoxic activities of this essential oil were examined. Results indicate that the essential oil has a broad range of antimicrobial activity against all of the tested microorganisms. Results: The 50% of cytotoxic concentrations was 26.4 μg/ml and 4266.7 μg/ml for Hela cells and human lymphocytes, respectively. The oil cytotoxicity against the human tumor cell line was far higher than the amount required for human healthy cells. Conversely, the essential oil’s IC50 value of 49.2 μg/ml in the DPPH assay, could be regarded as its strong antioxidant potential. Conclusion: According to the data obtained, it can be concluded that D. kotschyi essential oil could be applied as a safe antibacterial and antioxidant agent for food and pharmaceutical purposes

Comparative Analyses of the Volatile Components of Citrus Aurantium L. Flowers Using Ultrasonic-Assisted Headspace SPME and Hydrodistillation Combined with GC-MS and Evaluation of their Antimicrobial Activities

The volatile components of Citrus aurantium L. flowers were characterized by GC-MS with two different extraction techniques, hydrodistillation (HD) and ultrasonic-assisted headspace solid phase microextraction (UA-HS-SPME). In the SPME method, the volatile components of the samples, irradiated by ultrasonic radiation, were collected on a polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS) commercial fiber as well as some manually prepared nanoporous fibers from the samples headspace. To reach the better results, the extraction conditions were carefully optimized for the PDMS fiber. Under the optimized conditions (i.e. sonication time 15 min, extraction time 30 min and extraction temperature 55 ºC), 54 compounds were identified by the UA-HS-SPME-GC/MS method. The essential oil components of Citrus aurantium L. flower samples from two different regions of Iran and new and old samples from the same region were compared to one another. The major components identified for the samples with both the SPME and HD methods were linalool, linalyl acetate, limonene, β-myrcene, geranyl acetate, and neryl acetate, respectively. However, a substantial variation in the percentages of the components was identified for different samples and different extraction methods. The antimicrobial activities of the oil were also examined against six standard bacteria. There was some activity against Enterococcus fecalis, Escherichia coli, and Bacillus cereus, indicating important biological activities of the oil