Background: Antioxidants are multifaceted molecules playing a crucial role in several cellular functions. There is by now a well-established knowledge about their involvement in numerous processes associated with aging, including vascular damage, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. An emerging area of application has been lately identified for these compounds in relation to the recent findings indicating their ability to affect biofilm formation by some microbial pathogens, including Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus mutans, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Methods: A structured search of bibliographic databases for peer-reviewed research literature was performed using a focused review question. The quality of retrieved papers was appraised using standard tools.

Results: One hundred sixty-five papers extracted from pubmed database and published in the last fifteen years were included in this review focused on the assessment of the antimicrobial and antibiofilm activity of antioxidant compounds, including vitamins, flavonoids, non-flavonoid polyphenols, and antioxidant polymers. Mechanisms of action of some important antioxidant compounds, especially for vitamin C and phenolic acids, were identified.

Conclusions: The findings of this review confirm the potential benefits of the use of natural antioxidants as antimicrobial/antibiofilm compounds. Generally, gram-positive bacteria were found to be more sensitive to antioxidants than gram-negatives. Antioxidant polymeric systems have also been developed mainly derived from functionalization of polysaccharides with antioxidant molecules. The application of such systems in clinics may permit to overcome some issues related to the systemic delivery of antioxidants, such as poor absorption, loss of bioactivity, and limited half-life. However, investigations focused on the study of antibiofilm activity of antioxidant polymers are still very limited in number and therefore they are strongly encouraged in order to lay the foundations for application of antioxidant polymers in treatment of biofilm-based infections.

背景：抗氧化剂是在多种细胞功能中起关键作用的多方面分子。迄今为止，关于它们参与许多与衰老相关的过程的知识已广为人知，这些过程包括血管损伤，神经退行性疾病和癌症。这些化合物与最近的发现有关，最近表明它们对某些微生物病原体（包括金黄色葡萄球菌，变形链球菌和铜绿假单胞菌）影响生物膜形成的能力具有新兴的应用领域。

方法：使用重点评论问题对书目数据库进行结构化搜索，以查找经过同行评审的研究文献。使用标准工具评估检索到的论文的质量。

结果：从公开数据库中摘录并在过去的15年中发表的165篇论文被纳入本综述，重点评估抗氧化剂的抗菌和抗生物膜活性，包括维生素，类黄酮，非类黄酮多酚和抗氧化剂聚合物。确定了一些重要的抗氧化剂化合物，特别是维生素C和酚酸的作用机理。

结论：这篇综述的结果证实了使用天然抗氧化剂作为抗微生物/抗生物膜化合物的潜在益处。通常，发现革兰氏阳性细菌比革兰氏阴性细菌对抗氧化剂更敏感。还已经开发了主要由多糖与抗氧化剂分子的官能化形成的抗氧化剂聚合物体系。此类系统在临床中的应用可以克服与抗氧化剂全身性输送有关的一些问题，例如吸收差，生物活性降低和半衰期有限。然而，