Evaluation of antibacterial and antioxidant activities of enzymatically hydrolyzed bee pollen

Bee pollen is one of the most nutritious apitherapeutic products. This natural product cannot be digested in the human body due to its cell wall and a lot of valuable compounds accumulated in bee pollen are not absorbed. In order to obtain not only higher bioactivity, higher diversity of compounds from bee collected pollen, but also to improve bioavailability, additional processing of the raw material is proposed: to ferment using lactic acid bacteria or to hydrolyze using selective enzymes [1, 2]. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of enzymatic hydrolysis on antioxidant and antibacterial activities of bee collected pollen. Nine bee pollen samples from Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, Denmark, Malta and Slovakia were hydrolyzed using Viscozyme L, Clara-diastase, lipase, protease, amyloglucosidase and cellulase enzymes. Total phenolic content, total flavonoid content and antioxidant activity were determined using spectrophotometric methods [3]. Also, oxidation-reduction potential was analyzed [4]. Antibacterial activity against S. aureus, L. monocytogenes, S. enteritidis and S. typhimurium was evaluated using agar well diffusion method. Moreover, an interaction between bee pollen extracts and antimicrobial drugs, ceftazidime pentahydrate, erythromycin, oxytetracycline dihydrate, ciprofloxacin, was analyzed [5]. The results showed that the enzymatic hydrolysis increases total phenolic content (by 1.3-2.5 times), total flavonoid content (by 1.2-1.9 times) and antioxidant activity (by 1.2-2.1 times) of bee collected pollen. Samples hydrolyzed by cellulase enzyme showed significantly higher (p ≤ 0.05) oxidation-reduction potential after hydrolyzation. Overall, hydrolysis with enzymes improved bee pollen antibacterial activity (by 1.4-3.2 times) and had a positive effect on interaction of raw material extracts with antibiotics. It was determined that extracts of hydrolyzed bee[...]Gamtos mokslų fakultetasInstrumentinės analizės APCVytauto Didžiojo universiteta