Phytochemical Analysis and Antibacterial Activity of Copaifera ssp. From Ituberá-BA

The Copaifera L. genus belongs to the Fabeceae family and it is a native tree of Latin America and West of Africa. In Brazil, it is popularly known as “copaiba” having 26 species and 8 varieties. Copaiba oils are produced by exudation from the trunks of trees and it is employed in folk medicine due to its antibacterial and cicatrization effects. Despite many works conducted with this genus, there are few studies with species collected in Bahia state. Ethnopharmacological studies in Ituberá/BA city reports the use of Copaifera resin oil mainly for skin wound treatments. In this context, the present work aimed to perform the chemical analysis of Copaifera ssp. obtained from Ituberá/BA and also to evaluate the antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. The trunk barks of Copaifera spp. were collected in July 2018, Ituberá city, state of Bahia (S 13º46’26.553” - W 39º17’52.575”). Trunk barks were milled and submitted to static maceration with hexane for seven days. Chemical analysis was performed by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The analysis was performed on the model CGMS-QP2010 Ultra, Shimadzu, brand RTX-5MS Capillary (5% Diphenyl / 95% dimethyl polysiloxane), size: 30m x 0.25nm x 0.25 μm. The antibacterial activity was evaluated by disk diffusion method against S. aureus (ATCC 25923) and E. coli (ATCC 25922) using 4 mg of copaiba extract. Penicillin and ciprofloxacin were employed as reference antibiotics. By GC-MS were identified six terpenic metabolites of Ituberá copaiba hexane extract, being α-copaeno, a tricyclic sesquiterpene, as the major compound with 43%. In addition, the extract showed 10 ± 0.21 cm and 9 ± 0.12 cm as diameters of inhibition halos for S. aureus and E. coli, respectively. Penicillin presented an inhibition halo of 24 ± 1.00 cm for S. aureus and ciprofloxacin of 26 ± 0.96 cm for E. coli. Mendonça and Onofre (2009) showed similar antibacterial activity for resin oil obtained from Copaifera multijulga; with an inhibition halo for E. coli of 8 ± 1.34 cm and for S. aureus of 7 ± 1.23 cm; however, the chemistry was not performed. Tobouti and coworkes (2017) presented a review of antimicrobial activity of copaiba oil and call for more studies, since many papers were written in Portuguese and the chemistry was not correlated with the activity. In summary, the copaiba extract from Ituberá/BA presented terpenes characteristic of Copaifera genus and antimicrobial activity against a gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria.