Research progress of autophagy in acute lung injury induced by multiple factors

Autophagy is a highly conserved catabolic process, involving the degradation of cellular components, including damaged organelles, denatured proteins and various pathogens. It is a defense and stress mechanism for maintaining cell and tissue homeostasis. More and more evidences show that autophagy is closely related to many diseases. Acute lung injury is caused by intrapulmonary or extrapulmonary factors, with hypoxia and low lung compliance as the main manifestations. At present, its pathogenesis is not clear. It is known that the imbalance of inflammatory response and oxidative stress mechanism are the important mechanisms of its occurrence. The inflammatory response caused by acute lung injury has been reported to involve a series of changes in autophagy expression. Autophagy may be protective or harmful in acute lung injury. This article will summarize the respective roles of autophagy in acute lung injury caused by infectious factors (such as pathogen infection, lipopolysaccharide, sepsis) and non-infectious factors (acute pancreatitis, chlorine poisoning), so as to provide new ideas and strategies for better prevention of acute lung injury.