Improving antimicrobial activity of brown propolis with addition of spirulina platensis

In this study, differences between the ethanolic extract of two different samples of Turkish brown propolis (Gaziantep and Adana), in the total phenolic content, total fla-vonoid content, antioxidant and antimicrobial activities were investigated. The synergis-tic effect of propolis with incorporation of Spirulina platensis was also evaluated as an-timicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Candida albi-cans. Findings of this study indicates that there was no significant difference in total flavonoid content and antimicrobial activity between the two samples of propolis (p>0.05), but there was significant differences in antioxidant activity and total phenolic content (p<0.05). Propolis and S. platensisP showed good antimicrobial activity against the tested microorganisims alone and in combination, and the synergistic effect of propo-lis with incorporation of S. platensis was also confirmed. Accordingly, this study under-lined the in vitro antimicrobial activities of propolis, S. platensis and their combination. More deep and confirmatory studies are needed in the future to evaluate the in vivo an-timicrobial activity of the combination.