PRKN and atherosclerosis: In this study, we employed MAP1LC3B and SQSTM1 to evaluate mitophagy, in addition, we found that mitophagy-related PINK1 and PARK2 were decreased in EPC from atherosclerosis mice and mitophagy flux data confirmed mitophagy inhibition, which suggested that mitophagy was the major mechanism instead of macroautophagy.