Therefore, several autophagy-related DE genes that were upregulated in the serum of CE stroke patients were reported to be deleterious in ischemic models, supporting previous evidence that ischemic stroke usually evokes excessive autophagy (33, 34), and targeting autophagy dysfunction could attenuate cerebral ischemic stroke via mTOR/Ulk1 pathway in MCAO animals (35). Here, ULK1 is linked to ischemic stroke.