Zhang et al. (2013) provided reliable evidence that PF attenuates AGE-induced oxidative damage and inflammation in mesangial cells. Another report found that PF inhibits autophagy at least partly by inhibiting the RAGE/mTOR pathway (Chen et al., 2017). On the other hand, there is compelling evidence indicating that the targeted inhibition of abnormal TLR4 overexpression is valuable for alleviating DN progression (Fu et al., 2009; Devaraj et al., 2011; Shao et al., 2016). Here, MTOR is linked to liver dysplastic nodule.