Sperm miR-26a Tanscript Content in Normozoosper-mic Fertile and Infertile Men

Background: Infertility is a reproductive disorder with mul-tiple genetic and environmental causes which affects 15% of couples worldwide. With male factor responsible for half of the cases, approximately 7% of men encounter with infertility and About 60-75% of male infertility cases are considered to be idiopathic. Currently, due to WHO guidelines, conventional se-men parameters, including sperm concentration, motility, mor-phology, seminal volume and pH is being used for evaluation of male fertility potential which provide limited information and cannot distinguish fertile and infertile men on an individual basis. Consequently, clinicians are searching for more reliable seminal bio-markers to have more accurate prospective in the case of male infertility patients.Materials and Methods: Present study was approved by the institutional review board of Biology Department, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz. Semen samples were collect-ed from fertile (n=15) and infertile men (n=15) with normal sperm parameters according to the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Real- time PCR was carried out to evalu-ate relative expression of sperm miR-26a transcript content in ejaculated sperm.Results: Sperm concentration was significantly (P<0.05) low-er in men with unexplained infertility compared with control group. Significant (P<0.05) lower content of miR-26a transcript in ejaculated sperm observed in infertile men than fertile con-trol. Also, significant correlation (r=0.369, P=0.045) was seen between miR-26a transcript content and sperm morphology.Conclusion: Our findings indicate that assessment of sperm expression profile reflect the quality of spermatozoa in etiology of unexplained male infertility and suggest that miR-26a sperm content transcript could be used as novel diagnostic marker for male infertility or potential treatment target.

کلیدواژه ها:

Unexplained Male Infertility ، Normozoospermia ، Sperm Transcriptome ، miR-26a