Abstract
Human hypofertility and infertility are two worldwide conditions experiencing nowadays an alarming increase due to a complex ensemble of events. The immune system has been suggested as one of the responsible for some of the etiopathogenic mechanisms involved in these conditions. To shed some light into the strong correlation between the reproductive and immune system, as can be inferred by the several and valuable manuscripts published to date, here we built a network using a useful bioinformatic tool (DisGeNET), in which the key genes involved in the sperm-oviduct interaction were linked. This constitutes an important event related with Human fertility since this interaction, and specially the spermatozoa, represents a not-self entity immunotolerated by the female. As a result, we discovered that some proteins involved in the sperm-oviduct interaction are implicated in several immune system diseases while, at the same time, some immune system diseases could interfere by using different pathways with the reproduction process. The data presented here could be of great importance to understand the involvement of the immune system in fertility reduction in Humans, setting the basis for potential immune therapeutic tools in the near future.
Highlights
Fertilization is a cell-cell recognition process that occurs naturally in vivo within the oviductal microenvironment of the female body
As a result of this close interaction, it is originated a crosstalk between the oviduct epithelial cells (OECs) and the sperm cells, that is important to ensure the success of early reproductive events (Almiñana, 2015)
With regard to the oviductal fluid, it is mainly composed of amino acids, energy metabolites, inorganic salts, glycosaminoglycans and numerous proteins (Ballester et al, 2014; Coy and Yanagimachi, 2015; Canha-Gouveia et al, 2019), that are either passively or actively transported over the epithelial barrier from the circulating blood or the interstitial tissue, or de novo secreted by the OECs (Saint-Dizier et al, 2020) and are able to sustain and drive the biochemical machinery of spermatozoa and embryos during their journey
Summary
Fertilization is a cell-cell recognition process that occurs naturally in vivo within the oviductal microenvironment of the female body. The involvement of immune system in determining the success of fertility, or its partial or total failure (hypo-fertility or infertility) is still far to be completely deciphered, and the molecules involved in linking reproductive function with immune response are still under investigation. For this reason, here we carried out an innovative study to explore the possible involvement of genes encoding for proteins that participate to the functional dialogue existing between male gametes and female structures in immune pathologies. The final aim was to suggest new players in the complex relationship between the reproductive function and immune pathology, to shed some light on how fertility could be compromised in immune system dysregulation
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