ABSTRACT
Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a common and chronic metabolic disease, which disturbs the internal environment, and then causes series of acute or chronic complications. Chronic hyperglycemia induces macroangiopathy and microangiopathy, which is synergistically regulated by intricate molecular mechanisms, including inflammatory responses, intracellular stress, pyrotosis and ferroptosis. DM hinders the repair of blood-spinal cord barrier (BSCB) after spinal cord injury (SCI) and aggravates the neurological damage. Pericytes are the main component of neurovascular units, which regulates angiogenesis, capillary blood flow, and BSCB permeability. After SCI, the BSCB is destroyed, the coverage rate of pericytes is significantly reduced. Then, it greatly affects the normal function of blood vessels. Diabetes not only plays a role in regulating the contraction phenotype and signal transduction of pericytes, but also changes the secretion genome spectrum of pericytes, and then affects the normal function of pericytes. Moreover, it has also been shown that diabetes promotes the loss of pericytes after SCI. This review systematically describes the regulatory effect of diabetes on pericytes in the vascular system, and the effect of diabetes mediated-pericyte injury on BSCB after SCI.