Autophagy damage by AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) suppression can lead to dyslipidemia in the diabetic environment (Zhang et al., 2014), and dyslipidemia can further inhibit cardiac autophagy by enhancing mechanistic target of rapamycin kinase (mTOR) signaling of cardiomyocytes (Glazer et al., 2009). Here, MTOR is linked to metabolic syndrome.