[Correlation between microRNA-34b/c single nucleotide polymorphism rs4938723 and male infertility].

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the relationship between microRNA-34b/c single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs4938723 and the risk of male infertility.

METHODS

This case-control study included 553 males aged 19－40 (29.42 ± 5.09) years with idiopathic infertility, 153 with azoospermia and 400 with oligoasthenospermia, and another 332 normal fertile men aged 19－40 (28.5 4 ± 4.63) years as controls. We collected the clinical data and peripheral blood samples from the subjects, genotyped microRNA-34b/c rs4938723 by Sequenom MassARRAY, and analyzed the relationship between the genotypes of microRNA-34b/c rs4938723 and the risk of male infertility using the logistic regression model.

RESULTS

Statistically significant differences were observed between the infertility patients and normal controls in sperm concentration (［18.71 ± 15.19］ vs ［79.91 ± 43.96］ × 10⁶/ml, P < 0.01), the percentage of progressively motile sperm (［13.27 ± 24.52］% vs ［42.82 ± 8.86］%, P < 0.01) and the level of follicle stimulating hormone (［16.09 ± 17.37］ vs ［12.20 ± 4.73］ IU/L, P < 0.01). Compared with the TT genotype, the TC and CC genotypes showed no correlation with male infertility, nor did the genetic locus in the subgroup analysis.

CONCLUSIONS

No correlation was found between microRNA-34b/c SNP rs4938723 and male infertility, which, however, needs to be further verified by larger-sized samples.