Studies on the interactions between parabens and lipid membrane components in monolayers at the air/aqueous solution interface.

The interactions between parabens (PBs) and lipid components of mammalian and bacterial cell membranes were investigated in model systems of Langmuir monolayers. Me-, Et-, Pr- and Bu-paraben studied in this paper are frequently applied as cosmetics and food preservatives, since they possess broad antimicrobial activity. The mode of PB action is connected with their incorporation into the membrane of bacterial organisms, however; it is not known what is the role of the respective lipid species in this mechanism. This problem is crucial to understand the differences in paraben activity toward individual microorganisms and to shed the light onto the problem of PB cytotoxicity reported in studies on mammalian cells. In this paper, the mentioned aspects were investigated with application of the Langmuir monolayer technique complemented with BAM and GIXD. Our experiments revealed that the influence of PBs depends on their chemical structure, solution concentration and on the class of lipid. The strongest modification of the monolayer characteristics, leading to its collapse at low surface pressure, occurred in the presence of BuPB, having the largest chain. PBs interact preferentially with the monolayers possessing low degree of condensation, whereas for LC state, the effect was weaker and observed only as modification of the 2D unit cells. In the model systems, PBs interact with phospholipids characteristic for mammalian membranes (phosphatidylcholine) stronger than with bacterial (phosphatidylglycerol and cardiolipin). This strong influence of parabens on the model systems composed of animal lipids may explain cytotoxic activity of these preservatives.