| Osteoporosis, as a chronic metabolic disease, affects the normal life of middle-aged and elderly people. In the clinic, it has become a thorny problem to be solved urgently and it is short of specific drugs with clear targets and significant efficacy in preventing and treating osteoporosis. AMP activated protein kinase (AMPK), as the energy receptors of the cell, plays an important role in the key causes of osteoporosis, namely bone reconstruction imbalance, which can directly affect the bone multicellular unit including bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs), osteoblasts, and osteoclasts. More and more researches and achievements reported that TCM active ingredients targeting AMPK for anti-osteoporosis have been found out and achieved. In this paper, nearly 10-year related literature were retrieved through Web of Science, Pubmed, Wanfang database, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure to collect and comb the latest research progress about related function of AMPK in BMSCs, osteoblasts and osteoclasts. Wnt/β-catenin, ERK, mTOR and Gfi1/ OPN in BMSCs, Wnt/β-catenin and BMP-2/Smad in osteoblasts and c-Fos/NFATc1 in osteoclasts, which are all the different downstream signaling pathways of AMPK in these cells, are involved. Studies on the active components of traditional Chinese medicine, such as resveratrol, ginsenoside Rd, naringin, formononetin, sanguinarine, and hispidulin, are based to provide new ideas for better understanding the action mechanism of traditional Chinese medicine and its active components targeting AMPK for anti-osteoporosis. |