Lipopolysaccharides: From Erinyes to Charites

摘要

Following the discovery of endotoxins by Richard Pfeiffer, such bacterial product was associated to many severe disorders produced by an overwhelming inflammatory response and often resulting in endotoxic shock and multiple organ failure. However, recent clinical and basic sciences investigations claimed some beneficial roles of typical as well as atypical endotoxins. The aim of this paper is to focus on recent data supporting a beneficial activity of both typical and atypical endotoxins. Such novel perspective looks promising for development of new drugs for prevention and therapy of several human diseases. The Erinyes were three netherworld goddesses depicted as ugly, winged women with hair, arms, and waists entwined with poisonous serpents and personified the tormenting madness inflicted upon a patricide or matricide. They could make people suffer, and a nation harbouring such people could experience dearth, and with it hunger and disease. On the contrary, the Charites, also commonly known as the Graces, were three goddesses daughters of Zeus and named Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne. They were often associated with grace, beauty, adornment, mirth, festivity, dance, and songs of revel. The endotoxins of Gram-negative bacteria are lipopolysaccharides (LPSs), which are vital to both the structural and functional integrity of the bacterial outer membrane. In the first reports on endotoxin by Pfeiffer (1892) and Centanni (1894), only one side of the coin (the toxic activity) has been considered. Lewis Thomas reported the reaction of higher animals (including humans) to endotoxins as "... a uncontrolled and auto-destructive behaviour of the host, leading to the consideration of endotoxin as a venom. All this seems unnecessary, panic-driven. There is nothing intrinsically poisonous about endotoxin, but it must look awful, or feel awful, when sensed by cells..." (Lewis Thomas, Germs, 1974). However, endotoxins may behave not only as Erinyes but also as Charites. Indeed many LPS activities are being increasingly revealed to be beneficial to the host.