Length Is Associated with Pain: Jellyfish with Painful Sting Have Longer Nematocyst Tubules than Harmless Jellyfish.
Length Is Associated with Pain: Jellyfish with Painful Sting Have Longer Nematocyst Tubules than Harmless Jellyfish.
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0135015
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发表时间：
2015
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Nagai H
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kitatani R;Yamada M;Kamio M;Nagai H
世界各地有大量人类被水母蜇伤。叮咬引起急性疼痛，随后是持续性疼痛和局部炎症。有害的水母物种通常会引起强烈的疼痛，而无害的水母会引起轻微的疼痛或没有疼痛。水母通过注射一个小管来刺人，小管包含在水母的刺器官--水母囊中。小管穿透皮肤导致毒液注射。水母囊小管的详细形态和水母囊中毒液的分子结构已被报道;然而，负责有害和无害水母蜇伤引起的疼痛差异的机制尚未被探索或解释。因此，我们推测，膀胱小管长度的差异导致不同程度的上皮损伤。最初的急性疼痛可能是由刺激疼痛受体神经元的小管穿透引起的，而持续性疼痛可能是由毒液注射到上皮细胞中引起的。为了验证这一假设，我们比较了有害和无害水母物种的排泄囊小管的长度，并评估了它们穿透人类皮肤的能力。结果表明，造成中度至重度疼痛的有害水母种类太平洋金水母、短足Carybdea brevipedalia和山口摇蚊的包囊小管长于200 μm，而造成轻微疼痛或不造成疼痛的水母种类耳奥雷利亚的包囊小管则长于200 μm。在有害鱼类C. yamaguchii和C.短足动物的毒液长到足以穿透人表皮，物理刺激神经丛周围的Aδ疼痛受体纤维的游离神经末梢，引起急性疼痛，并将毒液注入人皮肤上皮，引起持续疼痛和炎症。
A large number of humans are stung by jellyfish all over the world. The stings cause acute pain followed by persistent pain and local inflammation. Harmful jellyfish species typically cause strong pain, whereas harmless jellyfish cause subtle or no pain. Jellyfish sting humans by injecting a tubule, contained in the nematocyst, the stinging organ of jellyfish. The tubule penetrates into the skin leading to venom injection. The detailed morphology of the nematocyst tubule and molecular structure of the venom in the nematocyst has been reported; however, the mechanism responsible for the difference in pain that is caused by harmful and harmless jellyfish sting has not yet been explored or explained. Therefore, we hypothesized that differences in the length of the nematocyst tubule leads to different degrees of epithelial damage. The initial acute pain might be generated by penetration of the tubule, which stimulates pain receptor neurons, whilst persistent pain might be caused by injection of venom into the epithelium. To test this hypothesis we compared the lengths of discharged nematocyst tubules from harmful and harmless jellyfish species and evaluated their ability to penetrate human skin. The results showed that the harmful jellyfish species, Chrysaora pacifica, Carybdea brevipedalia, and Chironex yamaguchii, causing moderate to severe pain, have nematocyst tubules longer than 200 μm, compared with a jellyfish species that cause little or no pain, Aurelia aurita. The majority of the tubules of harmful jellyfishes, C. yamaguchii and C. brevipedalia, were sufficiently long to penetrate the human epidermis and physically stimulate the free nerve endings of Aδ pain receptor fibers around plexuses to cause acute pain and inject the venom into the human skin epithelium to cause persistent pain and inflammation.