Table 2.

Activin A targets in brain injury.

activin A-related brain injury	Targets/mechanism	References
Hypoxic-ischemic brain damage	Follistatin/BMP-4, Act A/Smad pathway, p-Smad3/CHOP/caspase-12, LC3II/Beclin1, JNK1/p38	Tian et al., 2014 Nakajima et al., 2014 Guo et al., 2014 Wang et al., 2016a Xue et al., 2017.
Focal cerebral ischemia	Act A/Smad pathway	Mukerji et al., 2009 Hiratochi et al., 2007 Xue et al., 2016.
Ischemic tolerance	Act RII/JNK1/Smad3/Smad4	Xue et al., 2016 Wang et al., 2016b.
Cerebral hemorrhage	activin A binding protein	Nicolas et al., 2017 Ebert et al., 2006.
Premature infant brain injury	Acvr2a/Acvr2b, IL-10	Dillenburg et al., 2018 González-Domínguez et al., 2016 Petrakou et al., 2013.
Sepsis encephalopathy	TNF-α/IL-6/IL-1, caspase-1/IL-1β/ IL-8	Tania et al., 2014 Petrakou et al., 2013 Asashima et al., 1991.

Act A, activin A; Act RII, activin A receptor type II; Acvr2a/Acvr2b, activin A receptor type 2a/2b; BMP-4, bone morphogenetic protein 4; CHOP, C/EBP homologous protein; IL, interleukin; JNK1, c-Jun N-terminal kinase 1; LC3II, microtubule-associated protein light chain 3 II; TNF-α, tumor necrosis factor alpha.