Water Extract of Propolis Shows Higher Antimicrobial, Anti-Cancer Activity

Trigona laeviceps Propolis from Thailand: Antimicrobial, Antiproliferative and Cytotoxic Activities
The American Journal of Chinese Medicine, 2009;37(5):855-865

Propolis is one of the natural bee products which has long been used as a crude preventative and prophylactic medicine, and has been reported to possess antibacterial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, antioxidative and anticancer properties.

Propolis of the stingless bee, Trigona laeviceps, was extracted by water or methanol at 35% (w/v) yielding a crude water or a methanolic extract at 60 and 80 mg/ml, respectively, which is 17.1 and 22.9% (w/w) of the total propolis, respectively.

The antimicrobial activity of both crude extracts was assayed on four selected pathogenic microbes by using the agar well diffusion method. The results suggested that both water and methanolic crude extracts have some antimicrobial activities, water extract has greater antimicrobial activity than methanolic extract…

Antiproliferative and cytotoxic affects were tested on the colon carcinoma cell line, SW620, using the three parameters: (1) MTT assay; (2) cell morphology; and (3) the fragmentation of genomic DNA.

The water extract of propolis showed a higher antiproliferative activity than that of methanolic extract to SW620 cells, additionally both appeared to cause cell death by necrosis.