A Structure and Antioxidant Activity Study of Paracetamol and Salicylic Acid

Abstract

The paracetamol has more antioxidant properties than the salicylic acid on the several oxidative stress-forced models and one possible mechanism is due to electron or hydrogen transfer by the evaluated hydroxyl radicals. The antioxidant mechanism for the compounds studied here was performed by molecular modeling using quantum chemical calculations at the B3LYP level of theory. Our results show that the paracetamol has more antioxidant properties than the salicylic acid in experimental and theoretical studies. The theoretical mechanism show that the hydrogen transfer is more favorable than the electron transfer. From the study it was concluded that the electron abstraction for paracetamol is more favored than salicylic acid.