Polymorphisms in protamine 1 and 2 genes in asthenozoospermic men: A case-control study.

BACKGROUND

Asthenozoospermia is one of the etiologies for male factor infertility. It was shown that any abnormality in protamines genes, reduction of protamines transcript and protamines deficiency may play a key role in asthenozoospermia.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of the current study was the evaluation of protamine-1 and 2 genes ( and ) polymorphisms in asthenozoospermic men.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

In this case-control study, the samples were corresponded to asthenozoospermic specimens of infertile men. The normozoospermic samples were considered as the control group. DNA sequence amplification was performed using four PRM1 and PRM2 primers, designed from 5' to 3' flank regions. The human and gene sequences were screened in search of potential mutations in highly prevalent polymorphism regions in asthenozoospermia versus normozoospermia.

RESULTS

Totally, nine highly prevalent polymorphism regions between the forward and reverse primers were screened. Three of them corresponded to and six to . The most prevalent polymorphism regions in were related to 102G>T (rs35576928), 49C>T (rs140477029) and 139C>A (rs737008). In the , 6 highly prevalent polymorphisms regions were screened, including 248C>T (rs779337774), 401G>A (rs545828790), 288C>T (rs115686767), 288G>C (rs201933708), 373C>A (rs2070923), and 298G>C (rs1646022). The allele frequencies of three upper mentioned single nucleotide polymorphisms in asthenozoospermic men including 373C>A, 298G>C and 139C>A was higher than the control group.

CONCLUSION

Our findings indicated that the frequency of some altered genotypes in asthenozospermia was slightly higher than control group. We proposed more extensive studies to be sure that; these genotypes can precisely be related to diagnosis of asthenozoospermia, as the molecular markers.