1 1 Phytochemical profile, antioxidant and antibacterial activity of four Hypericum 2 species from the UK 3 4 Zeb Saddiqe1*, Ismat Naeem2, Claire Hellio3, Asmita V. Patel4, Ghulam Abbas5 5 1Department of Botany, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore, Pakistan 6 2Department of Chemistry, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore, Pakistan 3 7 Univ Brest, Laboratoire des Sciences de l’Environnement MARin (LEMAR) CNRS, IRD, Ifremer, 8 F-29280 Plouzané, France 9 4School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, University of Portsmouth, UK 10 5Biological Sciences and Chemistry-Chemistry Section, College of Arts and Sciences, University of 11 Nizwa, Oman 12 *Corresponding author 13 Email:
[email protected] 14 Tel: 92-42-99203801-09/250 15 ABSTRACT 16 Treatment of skin wounds is an important domain in biomedical research since many pathogenic 17 bacteria can invade the damaged tissues causing serious infections. Effective treatments are required 18 under such conditions to inhibit microbial growth. Plants are traditionally used for the treatment of 19 skin infections due to their antimicrobial potential. The antibacterial activity of different solvent 20 extracts of four Hypericum species (H. androsaemum, H. ericoides, H. x moserianum and H. 21 olympicum) traditionally acclaimed for their wound healing activity was examined in the present 22 study against Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa 23 and Enterobacter aerogenes. In addition the content and types of flavonoids [High Performance 24 Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) analysis], and antioxidant activity [1,1-diphenyl-2-picryIhydrazyl 25 (DPPH) assay] were evaluated for all the species. The most prominent antibacterial activity was 26 displayed by H.