Mitophagy in cardiovascular disease

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) leads to high morbidity and mortality rates worldwide. Accumulating evidence has revealed that mitochondria dysfunction is implicated in CVD, such as atherosclerosis (AS), hypertension, myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (MI/R) injury, myocardial infarction (MI), cardiac hypertrophy, heart failure (HF), dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) and so on. Mitophagy is a mitochondrial quality control mechanism that eliminates damaged or superfluous mitochondria to maintain cardiac function in response to various stress and cardiac disease conditions. This article reviews the latest findings regarding the mechanistic, functional, and potential role of mitophagy in the pathogenesis of CVD. Moreover, various drugs can target mitophagy activity during CVD progression. Thus, the modulation of the mitophagy pathway provides a potential therapeutic strategy for CVD management.

Keywords: Atherosclerosis; Cardiac hypertrophy; Heart failure; Hypertension; Ischemiareperfusion injury; Mitophagy.