In-vitro Antibacterial and Antioxidant Activities of Sandalwood (Santalum Album)

Santalum album commonly known as Sandalwood is used traditionally for health and wellness. It is an evergreen and hemi-parasitic tree and has a long history in Indian religious rituals and traditional Chinese medicine. Due to its wide application in cosmetics and therapeutics, we have done this study to explore the possibility of using aqueous extract of S. album as antibacterial and antioxidant agent. The S. album extract was prepared in distilled water. The activity of aqueous extract was evaluated against eight bacterial pathogens including two strains of Escherichia coli, one each of Klebsiella pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Aeromonas species and Klebsiella oxytoca. The anti-oxidant activity was analyzed by two most common radical scavenging assays of FRAP (ferric reducing antioxidant power) and DPPH (1,1- diphenyl- 2-picrylhydrazyl). Results showed that S. album had strongest inhibitory activity against S. aureus (MTCC 902) i.e. 87% whereas; it showed no inhibition against E.coli (ATCC 25922) and B. subtilis (MTCC736). The S. album extract showed DPPH radical scavenging activity in a concentration-dependent manner with maximum scavenging of 64% in presence of 500μl of aqueous extract. The FRAP assay also proved antioxidant potential of S. album with the highest value of 0.628mM at 200μl of aqueous extract.