Abstract: Autophagy, as a highly conserved process of recovery and degradation of eukaryotic components, plays an important role in cell hunger response, maintenance of normal cell activity and specific functions in lung tissue. When cells are damaged due to physiological, pathological or chemical factors, autophagosomes and lysosomes fuse to produce a large number of autophagosomes, thus inducing the initiation of autophagy process, which is beneficial to protect cells from injury. Recent studies have found that autophagy related signaling pathways are highly correlated with the occurrence and development of a variety of viral pneumonia, such as swine influenza A (H1N1) virus, highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (H5N1), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), middle east respiratory syndrome (MERS) and new coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19). This paper will introduce the five viral pneumonia that have a great impact on China and even the whole world, and elaborate the mechanism of autophagy in these disease. Hopefully it could provide theoretical basis and effective methods and means for targeted autophagy treatment of viral pneumonia. 

Key words: autophagy, viral pneumonia, targeting effects