McDonel J L
Am J Clin Nutr. 1979 Jan;32(1):210-8. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/32.1.210.
While certain strains of Clostridium perfringens have been associated with food poisoning outbreaks for the past 30 years, it has been only during the past 10 years that progress has been made in describing the disease process. And only within the past 5 years has meaningful progress been made in understanding the mechanism by which the disease is caused. Early observations, that the protein enterotoxin can cause erythema, increase capillary permeability, and exhibit parasympathomimetic properties, have been greatly added to in more recent studies. It is now believed tht the enterotoxin can alter intestinal transport of fluid, ions, and glucose, cause tissue damage in the gut and inhibit metabolic processes in intestinal tissue. Furthermore, the enterotoxin is thought to act very quickly (in a matter of minutes, compared to hours for other known enteropathogenic factors) and to affect basic function (macromolecular synthesis) and structure (membrane damage to microvillus brush borders) of individual cells. These findings have opened up many new questions that hopefully, when answered, will further the understanding of how this enterotoxin acts, as well as other enterotoxins being studied today.
在过去30年里，某些产气荚膜梭菌菌株一直与食物中毒暴发有关，但直到过去10年才在描述疾病过程方面取得进展。而仅在过去5年里，在了解该疾病的致病机制方面才取得了有意义的进展。早期观察发现，蛋白质肠毒素可引起红斑、增加毛细血管通透性并表现出拟副交感神经特性，最近的研究极大地丰富了这些观察结果。现在认为，肠毒素可改变肠道液体、离子和葡萄糖的转运，导致肠道组织损伤并抑制肠道组织中的代谢过程。此外，肠毒素被认为作用非常迅速（几分钟内，而其他已知的肠道致病因素则需要数小时），并影响单个细胞的基本功能（大分子合成）和结构（微绒毛刷状缘的膜损伤）。这些发现提出了许多新问题，希望这些问题得到解答后，将进一步加深对这种肠毒素以及当今正在研究的其他肠毒素作用方式的理解。
