The role of the autophagy in myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury

Autophagy is an intracellular process responsible for damaged or unnecessary protein and organelle degradation. In the heart, autophagy occurs at basal level and dysregulated autophagy is associated with a variety of cardiovascular diseases. Autophagy is enhanced in ischemia as well as in the reperfusion phase during cardiac ischemia reperfusion (I/R) injury. More importantly, recent studies revealed that autophagy exerted both beneficial and detrimental effects in pathology of cardiac ischemia reperfusion. This paper is to review the functional significance of autophagy in cardiac ischemia reperfusion injury and discuss underlying signaling pathways. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Autophagy and protein quality control in cardiometabolic diseases. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.