Male Infertility: Molecular Approaches to Diagnosis

📗 Male infertility is a multifactorial syndrome encompassing a wide variety of ‎disorders. In more than half of infertile men, the cause of their infertility is ‎mysterious (idiopathic) and could be congenital or acquired.‎ The causes are known in less than half of these cases, out of which genetic or ‎inherited disease and specific abnormalities in the Y chromosome are major ‎factors. About 10-20 percent of males presenting without sperm in the ‎ejaculate carry a deletion of the Y chromosome Male genetic factor of infertility accounts for about half the cases of couple ‎infertility and in around 50% of cases its etiology remains unknown. Molecular ‎genetic techniques have unveiled a number of etiopathogenetic factors, ‎including microdeletions of the Yq. Y chromosome microdeletions removing ‎the AZoospermia Factor (AZF) regions are the most frequent molecular genetic ‎causes of oligo/azoospermia).‎