Prolonged pretreatment of mice with cholera toxin, but not isoproterenol, alleviates acute lethal systemic inflammatory response

•Prolonged treatment of isoproterenol leads to higher mortality.•Isoproterenol worsens liver injury in septic shock under 24-h pretreatment.•The use of isoproterenol should be carefully considered under surgery.

Isoproterenol, a synthetic non-selective β-adrenergic agonist, is often used during the immediate postoperative period after open heart surgery for its chronotropic and vasodilatory effects. It has been demonstrated that isoproterenol pretreatment followed by immediate LPS administration leads to reduced tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) response in vivo. However, sepsis never happens immediately after the surgery, but rather severe immune dysfunction occurs at least 24 h later. It remains elusive what effects isoproterenol might exert to innate immunity during the period. In this scenario, we investigated the effects of 24-h isoproterenol pretreatment on septic shock induced by experimental endotoxemia and bacterial peritonitis, with cholera toxin as another cAMP elevator. Unexpectedly, we found that isoproterenol and cholera toxin exhibited distinct effects in acute lethal systemic inflammatory response. Isoproterenol worsened liver injury without enhancing NK/NKT activity. Meanwhile, cholera toxin but not isoproterenol showed dramatically reduced TNF-α response in LPS induced septic shock. Our data provide a caution for the clinical use of isoproterenol and suggest that isoproterenol has cAMP-independent functions.