Introduction and aim: Autophagy and its regulated pathways participate in many important cellular physiology and pathological processes involving protein aggregates, damaged mitochondria, excessive peroxisomes, ribosomes, and invading pathogens. This study aimed to review recently published studies and further describe the long noncoding RNA (lncRNA)-regulated autophagy during drug-induced liver injury (DILI).
Material and methods: DILI, autophagy, autophagy-related genes (ATGs), and lncRNA were used as key words to search published studies from PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of Science. All related studies were reviewed and analyzed.
Results: Many studies explicitly indicated that DILI and its progression to acute liver failure were causatively linked to endoplasmic reticulum stress and subsequently induced autophagy, which protect hepatocytes during DILI. LncRNA, as a noncoding RNA, influences the regulation of the expression of ATGs to manipulate autophagy.
Conclusions: This review described the recent findings on autophagy and its possible lncRNA-miRNA-associated pathways, thereby providing new insights for further studies on the pathogenesis of DILI.
Keywords: Autophagy. Autophagy-related genes. Drug-induced liver injury. Long noncoding RNA..