MicroRNA-145-5p in cardiovascular disease: An insufficiently explored and controversial research area

Recently, we have read with great interest the published paper by Zhang et al. [1], who found that the expression of miR-145-5p was downregulated in blood and artery specimens of patients with coronary stenosis. They further showed that downregulation of miR-145-5p could enhance CaMKIIδ expression in human aortic vascular smooth muscle cells and then activate autophagy through the AMPK/mTOR/ULK1 pathway to promote the formation of atherosclerosis. This result indicated that miR-145-5p played a critical role in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis.