Alteration in autophagy gene expression profile correlates with low sperm quality.

AIMS: Low sperm quality, a crucial factor of male infertility, is becoming a public health issue all over the world. In male reproductive system, autophagy plays an important role in maintaining physiological functions. There exist conjectures that disordered autophagy autophagy might be related to low sperm quality. However, there is no evidence can confirm that. This study aims to investigate the association between autophagy-associated genes and low sperm quality.

METHODS

Sperm samples of low sperm quality cases and matched controls were included to select differential expressed genes (DE genes) by autophagy-related functional gene microarray analysis. Then, 104 cases and 250 controls were included to validate the expression of four important autophagy genes (CXCR4, ESR1, PTEN and LC3B). Based on the obtained DE gene, gene Ontology and pathway analyses were conducted.

RESULTS

Chip results showed that expression of all 18 DE genes were decreased in the cases compared to the controls (P < 0.05). Expression of ESR1 were verified to be significantly decreased (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSION

Our results provided clues with the association among down-regulated expression of autophagy regulating and associated genes and low sperm quality. These findings revealed possible role of impaired autophagy in the mechanism of low sperm quality. Moreover, these may also provide potential targets for the treatment of low sperm quality.