Targeting autophagy as a potential therapeutic approach for immune thrombocytopenia therapy.

Autophagy involves the sequestration and lysosomal degradation of various cytoplasmic structures, including damaged organelles and invading microorganisms. Autophagy is not only an essential cell-intrinsic mechanism for protecting against internal and external stress conditions but is also key in the cellular response against microbes, in antigen processing for major histocompatibility complex (MHC) presentation, and in lymphocyte development, survival, and proliferation. In recent years, perturbations in autophagy have been implicated in a number of diseases, including autoimmune diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and multiple sclerosis (MS). Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is a multifactorial disease characterized by autoimmune responses to self-platelet membrane proteins. Recently, our unpublished original data demonstrated aberrant expression of molecules in the autophagy pathway in ITP patients compared with controls, and we found a close correlation between the pathogenesis of ITP and the autophagy pathway. The potential of targeting the autophagy pathway in ITP as a novel therapeutic approach has been discussed.