ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF A PATENTED BERGAMOT DIETARY SUPPLEMENT

Bergamot, the common name of the fruit Citrus bergamia Risso, is cultivated in a very thin strip Ionian coastline in Southern Italy, near Reggio Calabria. Several health effects of bergamot fruits are mainly related to their polyphenol content (Gabriele, M. et al., 2017). Bergamot fruits are commonly exploited for the outer peel mostly used for the essence production whilst recently the juice has gained considerable attention as potential agents for prevention and treatment of oxidative stress-related diseases. Nevertheless, the most part of fruits is disposed as waste product. In this work, a patented lyophilized Citrus bergamia dietary supplement (BergaLioTM, Patent N°102018000003303, Longo G.M.M.), marketed for its proved antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, was extracted in water at 50 °C for 24 hours (Caputo et al., 2018). The extract was assayed for the antimicrobial activity against several Staphyloccoccus spp. strains, generally associated with atopic dermatitis and urinary tract infections (Flores-Mireles et al., 2015; Musthaq et al., 2018). The results showed high inhibitory activities mostly against, S. epidermidis UR63 and S. saprophyticus UR18. Also 4 Pseudomonas fluorescens and 1 P. putida strains, recently found to trigger pathogenesis in debilitated and immune-compromised patients (Nishimura et al., 2017; Fernández et al., 2015), were strongly inhibited. RP-HPLC profile of BergaLioTM showed the abundance of hesperedin, quercetin and apigenin derivates, that, could be putatively involved in the antimicrobial activity, as demonstrated for other Citrus extracts. Although further studies are needed, this work adds new knowledge to the health benefits of BergaLioTM suggesting its exploitation, in combination with the conventional therapies against several human skin commensal bacteria and opportunistic pathogens correlated with nosocomial infections.