Autophagy Networks in Cardiovascular Diseases

Cardiovascular system is responsible of delivering all nutrients and oxygen that may request the organism, and because of its importance exist an almost complete knowledge about how it works. However, the major incidence of diseases in the world are related to the cardiovascular system, for this reason is vital to detect the effect and causality of this type of diseases. Due to autophagy is necessary to maintain the structure and function of cardiac cells, this process has been deeply study in cardiomyocytes, cardiac fibroblast, endothelial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells. Optimal autophagy activity is critical to the maintenance of cardiovascular homeostasis; deregulated autophagy levels contribute to development of heart disease. In this chapter, we discuss the relationship between autophagy networks and cardiovascular diseases.