Department of Biochemistry and Clinical Laboratories, Faculty of Medicine, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
Department of Physiology, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
Mol Diagn Ther. 2021 May;25(3):315-325. doi: 10.1007/s40291-021-00524-8. Epub 2021 Apr 15.
Non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA) is a severe form of male factor infertility resulting from the impairment of sperm production. Surgical sperm retrieval followed by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is the only alternative for NOA patients to have their own genetic children. Nevertheless, due to an approximately 50% chance of success, harvesting sperm from these patients remains challenging. Thus, discovering noninvasive biomarkers, which are able to reliably predict the probability of sperm acquisition, not only can eliminate the risk of surgery but also can lower the costs of NOA diagnosis and treatment. Seminal plasma is the non-cellular and liquid portion of the ejaculate that consists of the secretions originating from testes and male accessory glands. In past years, a wide range of biomolecules including DNAs, RNAs, proteins, and metabolic intermediates have been identified by omics techniques in human seminal plasma. The current review aimed to briefly describe genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic profiles of human seminal plasma in an attempt to introduce potential candidate noninvasive biomarkers for sperm-retrieval success in men with NOA.
非阻塞性无精子症（NOA）是一种严重的男性因素不育症，其原因是精子生成受损。对于 NOA 患者来说，唯一的选择是通过手术获取精子，然后进行胞浆内单精子注射（ICSI），以使其拥有自己的遗传后代。然而，由于成功率约为 50%，从这些患者中获取精子仍然具有挑战性。因此，发现非侵入性生物标志物，能够可靠地预测精子获取的概率，不仅可以消除手术风险，还可以降低 NOA 诊断和治疗的成本。精液是精液中非细胞和液体部分，由睾丸和男性附属腺体的分泌物组成。在过去的几年中，通过组学技术已经在人类精液中鉴定出了多种生物分子，包括 DNA、RNA、蛋白质和代谢中间产物。本综述旨在简要描述人类精液的基因组、转录组、蛋白质组和代谢组图谱，以期为 NOA 男性精子获取成功的潜在非侵入性生物标志物提供候选。
