Dissertação de mest., Ciências Biomédicas, Departamento de Ciências Biomédicas e Medicina, Univ. do Algarve, 2009In this work, extracts (aqueous, ethanolic and methanolic) of propolis harvested at two
different times (winter and spring) from several locations of the Algarve region (B. N. Arrodeios,
B. N. Pé da Serra, B. S. Arneijoafra and T. N. Madeira) were tested for their biological activities
and composition.
Results showed that propolis extracts were active against both Gram-positive and Gramnegative
bacteria. All tested strains of bacteria showed susceptibility to the diluted propolis
extracts (1:10) and in the majority of cases in a dose-dependent way. Most propolis samples
collected at springtime showed higher antibacterial activity, in comparison with samples
harvested at wintertime. There were also observed differences between collection sites and type
of extract. These results correlate to HPLC results, where the same differences where observed.
Regarding propolis citotoxicity, results showed that aqueous propolis extracts have no
effect and ethanolic propolis extracts causes a small decrease in cell viability.
Concerning antioxidant enzymatic activities, the superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase
(CAT) and guaiacol peroxidase (GP) activities of samples of propolis were determined. Results
showed that SOD activity was dependent on the collection time and decreased drastically from
winter to spring in samples from B.N. Arrodeios and B.S. Arneijoafra. The opposite was
observed in samples from B.N. Pé da Serra and T.N. Madeira. We expected that the samples
with higher SOD activities would have higher CAT activities also. Such was not observed,
which may suggest that there could be other antioxidant enzymes involved, different to the ones
tested.
In respect with protein contents, major differences were not observed when comparing
samples collected at different times, except for samples from B.S. Arneijoafra, where a decrease
occurred from the sample collected at winter to sample collected at spring time.
This was the first study of the biological activities of Portuguese propolis from the
Algarve region
