Evaluation of antibacterial and antioxidant activities of three types of benzoin resin

Abstract

The benzoin resin is used extensively in traditional medicine for its many reported therapeutic properties. The essential oils of three different types of benzoin resin were extracted using the traditional method in this study. The yield of essential oils of the white, red and gray types of resin was 1.01, 0.92 and 0.54%, respectively. The obtained extracts were tested against two types of pathogenic bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. The tests showed that essential oil of gray type resin is effective against both Escherichia coli (14 mm) and Staphylococcus aureus (11 mm). The antioxidant activity has been also evaluated to compare the efficiency of different type of resin with DPPH· assay. In the DPPH· system, the antioxidant activity of the red resin extract (0.01 μg/mL) was superior to that of the white (27.32 μg/mL) and gray (42.90 μg/mL) extracts, with IC50 values, respectively.