Propolis: From folk medicine to modern preparations
2007
Bankova, V.(Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia (Bulgaria)) | Popova, M. | Trusheva, B. | Bogdanov, S. | Sabatini, A.G. | Marcucci, M.
Propolis has been used as a remedy since ancient times, because of its remarkable healing properties. It attracts the attention of modern scientists with its diverse pharmacological activities and low toxicity. At present, there are two main directions in propolis research. One is aimed to the use of propolis in well defined pharmaceutical preparations, and the other one is based on propolis as a source of new biologically active molecules, mainly anticancer, antibacterial and antioxidative agents. Concerning the first line of research, chemical variability of propolis is a serious obstacle to its standardization and respectively, to its official acceptance into the main stream of the health care system. For standardization to be achieved, it is very important to realize that comparing propolis samples from different regions of the world might be the same as comparing extracts of two plants that belong to different plant families. We have proposed a reliable standardization procedure for poplar propolis, a propolis type which contains mainly flavonoids and phenolics. The application of this procedure to a number of samples (over 100) enabled us to describe the typical characteristics of poplar propolis in terms of bioactive components percentage.
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