The mechanism of organophosphorus pesticide-induced inhibition of cytolytic activity of killer cells.

The main toxicity of organophosphorus pesticides (OPs) is neurotoxicity, which is caused by the inhibition of acetylcholinesterase. OPs also affect immune responses including effects on antibody production, IL-2 production, T cell proliferation, decrease of CD5 cells, and increase of CD26 cells and autoantibodies. However, there have been few papers investigating the mechanism of OP-induced inhibition of cytolytic activity of killer cells. This study reviews the new mechanism of OP-induced inhibition of activities of natural killer (NK), lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) and cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL). NK, LAK and CTL induce cell death in tumor or virus-infected target cells by two main mechanisms. The first mechanism is direct release of cytolytic granules that contain perforin, granzymes, and granulysin by exocytosis to kill target cells, which is called the granule exocytosis pathway. The second mechanism is mediated by the Fas ligand (Fas-L)/Fas pathway. To date, it has been reported that OPs inhibit NK, LAK and CTL activities by at least the following three mechanisms: 1) OPs impair the granule exocytosis pathway of NK, LAK and CTL cells by inhibiting the activity of granzymes, and by decreasing the intracellular level of perforin, granzyme A and granulysin, which was mediated by inducing degranulation of NK cells and by inhibiting the transcript of mRNA of perforin, granzyme A and granulysin; 2) OPs impair the FasL/Fas pathway of NK, LAK and CTL cells, as investigated by using perforin-knockout mice, in which the granule exocytosis pathway of NK cells does not function and only the FasL/Fas pathway remains functional; 3) OPs induce apoptosis of immune cells.