The blood-retinal barrier (BRB) comprises the inner blood-retinal barrier (iBRB) and the outer blood-retinal barrier (oBRB). The integrity of the BRB is essential to maintaining stability of the retinal microenvironment. Mitophagy plays a crucial role in maintaining organellar integrity by regulating mitochondrial quality and quantity. High glucose-induced mitophagy dysfunction contributes to diabetic retinopathy (DR) by damaging the BRB. This review presents mitophagy mechanisms under physiological conditions and examines changes across different cell types under DR-related pathological conditions that damage the BRB. It also summarizes drugs and targets that regulate mitophagy to stabilize the BRB and alleviate DR, offering new therapeutic insights.
Li et al. (Wed,) studied this question.