Chromosomal abnormality diagnosis of male infertility by QF-PCR

Abstract

To assess the clinical practice of quantitative fluorescence PCR (QF-PCR) in genetic diagnosis of male infertility patients, 78 nonobstructive male infertility patients were pooled for semen routine screening and sexual hormone determination; QF-PCR was applied to detect the polymorphic short tandem repeat (STR) and specific sequence tagged site (STS) of sex chromosomes; routine chromosome G-band was used for karyotype analysis and PCR was used for the detection of AZF microdeletion. Routine screening of semen found 18 azoospermia and 20 oligospermia patients (48.72%). Three patients with 47, XXY, two with 46,XX(SRY+)and one with AZFc microdeletion were detected using QF-PCR technique which were verified by chromosome G-band and PCR. This study suggests that QF-PCR is a comprehensive, rapid and reliable method for detecting abnormal chromosomal regions and microstructures compared with traditional tests and provides a better candidate for diagnosis of male infertility caused by chromosomal anomalies and gene mutation.