Background Infertility is the inability of a couple to conceive after one and a half years of unprotected sex. Male infertility, which accounts for almost half of infertility cases, is considered as a major problem all over the world. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of CYP1A1 polymorphisms with idiopathic non-obstructive azoospermia in a South Indian cohort. MATERIALS...

Non-obstructive azoospermia is a severe infertility factor. Currently, the etiology of this condition remains elusive with several possible molecular pathway disruptions identified in the post-meiotic spermatozoa. In the presented study, in order to identify all possible candidate genes associated with azoospermia and to map their relationship, we present the first protein-protein interaction n...

Azoospermia frequently represents the end-point of different pathological conditions that cause important quantitative and qualitative alterations of both spermatogenesis and testicular structure, including intratesticular blood vessels. In this study we performed colour Doppler ultrasound of the testis in 12 azoospermic subjects affected by primary testicular pathology (four bilateral post-orc...

OBJECTIVE To report the type and frequency of chromosomal anomalies and Y-microdeletions among Hong Kong Chinese subfertile men with sperm concentrations lower than 5 million/mL. DESIGN. Retrospective study. SETTING A reproductive centre in Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS A total of 295 Chinese subfertile men who underwent both karyotyping and Y-microdeletion studies from 2000 to 2007 were categori...

PIWI-interacting RNA (piRNA) clusters act as anti-transposon/retrovirus centers. Integration of selfish jumping elements into piRNA clusters generates de novo piRNAs, which in turn exert trans-silencing activity against these elements in animal gonads. To date, neither genome-wide chromatin modification states of piRNA clusters nor a mode for piRNA precursor transcription have been well underst...