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Herbal medicine from natural resources plays an important role as antibacterial and antioxidant agents. The present investigation was designed to evaluate the antibacterial and antioxidant properties of thyme (Thymus vulgaris L.) essential oil (TEO) and/or chitosan (CH) in vitro. Results indicated that TEO exhibited high radical scavenging activity (RSA) toward DPPH, ABTS, linoleic acid deterioration and iron chelation activity. TEO exhibited high amount of total phenolic compounds (TPC) related to its terpenes. The TPC of TEO was 177.3 mg GAE g-1 demonstrated 149.8 μmol of TE g-1 DPPH-RSA and 192.4 μmol of TE g-1 ABTS-RSA. The antioxidant capacity of TEO exhibited 68.9% reduction when evaluated by β-carotene bleaching assay. The reducing power activity related to iron chelation was 142.8 μmol of AAE g-1. The TEO exhibited a high content of Thymol (41.04%) as major compound over 14 identified components by GC-MS analysis followed by 1,8-Cineole (14.26%), γ-Terpinene (12.06%), p-Cymene (10.50%) and α-Terpinene (9.22%). TEO exhibited antimicrobial activity in vitro and MIC noticed that TEO was efficiently affected pathogens in vitro. Indeed, CH exhibited negligible or very low antimicrobial activity. In conclusion, both investigated TEO and TEO-CHmix have strong antibacterial activity against many pathogenic bacteria and need exploitation as an alternative source of natural antibacterial and antioxidant agents for potential applications.
Aljabeili et al. (Mon,) studied this question.