Fig. 1.

Proposed dysregulation of autophagy in the development of CRS. Autophagy is an extremely complex and tightly regulated cellular process in various human physiological and pathological processes. Many factors such as nutrient status, ER stress, inflammation, as well as ROS regulate the autophagy through mTOR, AMPK, and Sirts signaling pathways and eventually cause dysfunction of heart, vascular, adipose, skeletal muscle, and pancreatic β-cells in CRS. These pathophysiological changes furthermore bring out the risk factors in the dysregulation of autophagy in a potentially vicious cycle manner.