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.
Keywords: male infertility; rs4938723; single nucleotide polymorphism; MicroRNA-34b/c.