association between semen paraoxonase-1 activity level and l55m gene variants with risk of male infertility

Today evaluation of polymorphisms of the antioxidant enzyme-encoding genes, which affect the activity of antioxidant enzymes, could be used as risk prediction models for male infertility. this study aims to evaluate coloration of serum paraoxonase (pon1) activity levels in the semen and its l55m gene variants with risk male infertility. in a case-control study, semen samples were collected from 80 healthy controls and 128 infertile men at fatemeh al-zahra ivf and pastor laboratory (babol, mazandaran, iran). pon1 activity of semen samples was measured by spectrophotometric methods. genotyping of all individuals based on pon1-l55m loci performed by pcr-rflp and pcr-sequencing and molecular effects of leucine (l) to methionine (m) substitution were investigated by bioinformatics tools. results showed a significant difference in genotype frequencies of pon1-l55m polymorphism between patient and control groups, and c.163t>a transition effect on the structure and function of pon1 protein. also, ta genotype (or=1.754, 95%ci=0.971 to 3.166, p= 0.062) and aa genotype (or=5.067, 95%ci=1.366 to 18.789, p= 0.015) were associated with male infertility. men with mutant allele (aa+ta) are exposed to be at the risk of male infertility (or= 1.990, 95%ci= 1.118 to 3.54, p= 0.019). also, the allelic analysis showed that the a allele was associated with the increased risk of idiopathic male infertility (or= 1.749, 95%ci= 1.143 to 2.676, p= 0.010). additionally, pon1 activity was higher in the tt (ll) individuals compared to the ta (lm) and aa (mm) men in both groups (ll> lm> mm). since, the pon1-l55m gene variants are related to pon1 activity levels in the semen and serum paraoxonase is known as an important antioxidant calcium-dependent enzyme, it could be implicated in male infertility. based on these findings, the presence of mutant allele (a) and or decreasing semen’s pon1 level may be an indicator/ prediction factor for male infertility.