RESEARCH ARTICLE In vitro antioxidant activity and phytochemical analysis of Teucrium pseudo-Scorodonia Desf. Collected from Algeria Karima Belarbi 1 & Fawzia Atik-Bekkara 1 & Imad Abdelhamid El Haci 2 & Ilhem Bensaid 1 & Fawzia Beddou 3 & Chahrazed Bekhechi 1 Received: 18 January 2017 /Accepted: 5 April 2017 # Institute of Korean Medicine, Kyung Hee University and Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017 Abstract Teucrium pseudo-Scorodonia Desf., is one of many Mediterranean plants widely used in Algerian folk medicine for their medicinal properties. This study represents the first antioxidant investigation of Teucrium pseudo- Scorodonia with different analytical methods. Total phe- nolic, flavonoid, and condensed tannin contents were determined using spectrophotometric techniques. In vitro antioxidant and radical scavenging profiling was determined through total antioxidant capacity (TAC), DPPH radical-scavenging, ferric reducing antiox- idant power (FRAP), and β-carotene bleaching assays. Leaf extracts exhibited high total phenolics (266.36 ± 0.14 mg GAE/g DW), flavonoids (161.23 ± 0.18 mg CE/g DW) and condensed tannins (5.00 ± 0.08 mg CE/g DW) contents. The greatest an- tioxidant activity was founding in the butanolic fraction of leaves (IC 50.DPPH = 0.05 ± 0.00 mg/ml) followed by crude methanolic extract and ethyl acetate fraction. These values were to some extent high in comparison to the positive control (0.07 ± 0.01 mg/ml). The same tendency was observed with ferric reducing power. A strong correlation of IC 50 values of antioxidant assays with total phenolics and total flavonoids content of T. pseudo-Scorodonia was exhibited in this study. Thin layer chromatographic (TLC) screening using DPPH radical, AlCl 3 and FeCl 3 as detection reagents led to the identification of potent antioxidant compounds: methylated flavonoids or hydroxyflavonols. These re- sults indicate that flavonoids and phenolics can be the major contributors to the antioxidant activity observed for the T. pseudo-Scorodonia leaf extracts. Further study is necessary for isolation and characterization of the active antioxidants, which may serve as a potential source of natural antioxidants. Keywords Teucrium pseudo-Scorodonia Desf . Phenolic . Flavonoid . Condensed tannin . Natural antioxidants Introduction Oxidation is essential to many living organisms for the production of energy necessary for biological processes. Reactive oxygen species (ROS), including superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, hydroxyl (HO–), peroxyl (ROO–), and alkoxyl (RO–), are produced in vivo during oxida- tion (Blokhina et al. 2003). Organisms can maintain a dynamic equilibrium between production and elimina- tion of ROS in normal conditions. However, when or- ganisms are subjected to stress conditions, this equilib- rium is disrupted. Consequently, excessive accumulation of ROS will result in cellular injuries, including lipid peroxidation, protein oxidation, and DNA damage, which are involved in the development of a variety of diseases including cellular aging, mutagenesis, carcino- genesis, hepatopathies, diabetes, and neurodegeneration (Moskovitz et al. 2002). * Karima Belarbi belarbi_karima@ymail.com 1 Laboratoire de Produits Naturels, Département de Biologie, Faculté SNV-STU, Université Aboubekr Belkaïd, B.P. 119, Tlemcen 13000, Algérie 2 Centre de Recherche scientifique et technique en Analyses Physico-Chimiques (CRAPC), BP 384, Bou-Ismail 42004 Tipaza, Algérie 3 Département de Biologie Cellulaire et Moléculaire, Faculté des Sciences Biologiques, Université des Sciences et de la Technologie Houari Boumedien, BP 32 El Alia, 16111 Bab Ezzouar, Algérie Orient Pharm Exp Med DOI 10.1007/s13596-017-0260-3 Online ISSN 2211-1069 Print ISSN 1598-2386