Training Center of the European Academy of Andrology (EAA), Dermatology, Venerology and Allergology Clinic, University Hospital Leipzig, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Legal Medicine, Leipzig University, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
Int J Mol Sci. 2022 Aug 12;23(16):9031. doi: 10.3390/ijms23169031.
Human life without sperm is not possible. Therefore, it is alarming that the fertilizing ability of human spermatozoa is continuously decreasing. The reasons for that are widely unknown, but there is hope that metabolomics-based investigations may be able to contribute to overcoming this problem. This review summarizes the attempts made so far.
We will discuss liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), gas chromatography (GC), infrared (IR) and Raman as well as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Almost all available studies apply one of these methods.
Depending on the methodology used, different compounds can be detected, which is (in combination with sophisticated methods of bioinformatics) helpful to estimate the state of the sperm. Often, but not in all cases, there is a correlation with clinical parameters such as the sperm mobility.
LC-MS detects the highest number of metabolites and can be considered as the method of choice. Unfortunately, the reproducibility of some studies is poor, and, thus, further improvements of the study designs are needed to overcome this problem. Additionally, a stronger focus on the biochemical consequences of the altered metabolite concentrations is also required.
没有精子，人类生命是不可能存在的。因此，令人震惊的是，人类精子的受精能力正在持续下降。造成这种情况的原因尚不清楚，但希望基于代谢组学的研究可能有助于解决这个问题。这篇综述总结了迄今为止的尝试。
我们将讨论液相色谱-质谱（LC-MS）、气相色谱（GC）、红外（IR）和拉曼以及核磁共振（NMR）光谱。几乎所有可用的研究都应用了这些方法中的一种。
根据所使用的方法，不同的化合物可以被检测到，这有助于（与复杂的生物信息学方法相结合）评估精子的状态。通常，但并非在所有情况下，都与精子活力等临床参数相关。
LC-MS 可以检测到最多数量的代谢物，可以被认为是首选方法。不幸的是，一些研究的重现性较差，因此需要进一步改进研究设计以克服这个问题。此外，还需要更加强调对改变的代谢物浓度的生化后果的关注。
