ABSTRACT
With the aging of population and the changes of lifes-tyle, the cardiovascular diseases have become a serious threat to human health. Meanwhile, the cardiovascular death has become the chief death reason during recent epidemiological survey, so the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases have be-come the focus of researches now. Mitochondrial ATP-sensitive potassium channels ( mitoKATP ) is an inward rectifier potassium channel located in the mitochondrial inner membrane, which has the effect of improving the energy metabolism, inhibiting the ap-optosis, relieving the overload of Ca2+ and stabilizing the inter-nal environment. Recently, some researchers have also found that mitoKATP can influence the development of cardiovascular diseases in different ways. This paper summarizes the structure and function of mitoKATP and the relationship between cardiovas-cular diseases and mitoKATP , aiming to clarify its role in the de-velopment of cardiovascular diseases.