The effect of fasting or calorie restriction on autophagy induction: A review of the literature
Bagherniya M, Butler AE, Barreto GE, Sahebkar A · 2018 · Ageing Research Reviews
DOI: 10.1016/j.arr.2018.08.004View source ↗
“We conclude that both fasting and CR have a role in the upregulation of autophagy, the evidence overwhelmingly suggesting that autophagy is induced in a wide variety of tissues and organs in response to food deprivation.”
Summary
This is the most-cited review of whether fasting and calorie restriction actually trigger autophagy — the cellular self-cleaning process that recycles damaged proteins and organelles. The authors surveyed studies across cell culture, rodent models, and human subjects, looking at autophagy markers such as LC3 lipidation, p62 turnover, ATG7 expression, and mTOR signalling under various fasting and calorie-restriction protocols. Their headline conclusion is that fasting and calorie restriction reliably upregulate autophagy across a wide variety of tissues and organs — liver, muscle, brain, heart, kidney — and that the effect is robust. They also note that autophagy is mechanistically central to the longevity and disease-prevention benefits of caloric restriction: blocking autophagy in animal models attenuates those benefits. The evidence base, however, leans heavily on rodent and cell-culture work; direct measurement of autophagy in living humans is limited because most autophagy markers require tissue biopsy.
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Entries that reference this one
Bagherniya 2018 reviewed fasting + autophagy; Alirezaei 2010 is the specific mouse-brain experiment showing that even short fasts engage neuronal autophagy — overturning prior dogma that the brain was metabolically privileged from autophagy induction.
Bagherniya 2018 reviews fasting-induced autophagy; Levine/Kroemer 2008 is the disease-context foundation that those fasting protocols intersect with.
Bagherniya's review of fasting + autophagy notes mTOR/HDAC mechanisms; Newman/Verdin specifies the mechanism — βOHB directly inhibits class-I HDACs and modulates chromatin.
Bagherniya 2018 reviewed fasting + autophagy as a literature; Hofer/Madeo 2024 identified the specific molecular mediator (spermidine) that's required for the link to function in human cells and across multiple species.
Bagherniya 2018 reviews fasting-induced autophagy specifically; Mizushima et al. 2008 is the foundational Nature review of autophagy mechanisms more broadly — the disease-physiology context that fasting-induced autophagy operates within.
Bagherniya reviewed fasting + autophagy at the level of physiology; Saxton/Sabatini reviews the molecular signaling network (mTOR) that fasting acts on to release autophagy.
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