Autophagy and Diabetic Encephalopathy: Mechanistic Insights and Potential Therapeutic Implications

Diabetic Encephalopathy (DE) is one of the complications of diabetes mellitus (DM) in the central nervous system. Up to now, the mechanisms of DE are not fully discussed by the field. Autophagy is an intracellular degradation pathway crucial to maintain cellular homeostasis by clearing damaged organelles, pathogens, and unwanted protein aggregates. Increasing evidence has demonstrated that autophagy might play an essential role in DE progress. In this review, we summarize the current evidence on autophagy dysfunction under the condition of DE, and provide novel insights of possibly biological mechanisms linking autophagy impairment to DE, as well as discuss autophagy-targeted therapies as potential treatments for DE.