Midkine: A multifaceted driver of atherosclerosis

•Midkine promotes macrophage lipid accumulation.•Midkine enhances vascular inflammation.•Midkine stimulates the migration and proliferation of VSMCs.•Midkine inhibits macrophage apoptosis.•Midkine induces insulin resistance. Atherosclerosis constitutes the pathological basis of life-threatening even...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Clinica chimica acta 2021-10, Vol.521, p.251-257
Main Authors: Zhang, Zi-Zhen, Wang, Gang, Yin, Shan-Hui, Yu, Xiao-Hua
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atherosclerosis
Inflammation
Lipid accumulation
Midkine
Neointima formation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•Midkine promotes macrophage lipid accumulation.•Midkine enhances vascular inflammation.•Midkine stimulates the migration and proliferation of VSMCs.•Midkine inhibits macrophage apoptosis.•Midkine induces insulin resistance. Atherosclerosis constitutes the pathological basis of life-threatening events, including heart attack and stroke. Midkine is a heparin-binding growth factor and forms a small protein family with pleiotrophin. Under inflammatory or hypoxic conditions, midkine expression is up-regulated. Upon binding to its receptors, midkine can activate multiple signal pathways to regulate cell survival and migration, epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, and oncogenesis. Circulating midkine levels are significantly increased in patients with essential hypertension, obesity or severe peripheral artery disease. Importantly, midkine exerts a proatherogenic effect by altering multiple pathophysiological processes involving atherogenesis, including macrophage lipid accumulation, vascular inflammation, neointima formation, insulin resistance and macrophage apoptosis. Midkine represents a potential therapeutic target for atherosclerosis-associated diseases. This review described the structure characteristics, expression patterns and signal transduction pathways of midkine with an emphasis on its role in atherosclerosis.
ISSN:0009-8981
1873-3492
DOI:10.1016/j.cca.2021.07.024