Research progress of methamphetamine inducing nerve cell′s autophagy / 中国药理学通报

ABSTRACT

Methamphetamine ( METH ) , a powerful stimulant of amphetamine type in the central nervous system ( CNS ) , is a new kind of synthetic drugs mainly in psychological dependence. Long-time abuse will lead to strong neurotoxicity and drug de-pendence. Recently it has become the abuse problem in public health. Autophagy is a process of degradation and utilization of the cellular components by the lysosome, which widely exists in eukaryotic cells. Many studies show that methamphetamine can iduce autophagy,but the underlying mechanism is not fully un-derstood yet . Therefore,the mechanisms and signaling pathways of autophagy by methamphetamine and the roles of autophagy in methamphetamine induce neurotoxicity are reviewed in this pa-per, so as to provide reference materials for further research of methamphetamine and autophagy.