Multi-omics analysis and experimental verification reveal testicular fatty acid metabolism disorder in non-obstructive azoospermia

Between the hours of 8:00 and 11:00 AM, we collected samples of serum and seminal plasma from a total of 46 individuals.Among them were 21 patients diagnosed with non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA; n = 21) and the remaining 25 men were healthy individuals serving as controls. These samples were obtained during routine semen analysis at our clinical laboratory, specifically between September 2017 and January 2020。The age range of the individuals was between 20 and 43 years. After being subjected to centrifugation at room temperature for 10 min at a force of 1800 times the acceleration due to gravity, the serum samples were subsequently preserved at -70℃. The levels of free fatty acids in seminal plasma were examined using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC/MS).GC/MS was utilized to determine the concentrations of methylated fatty acids employing an Agilent 7890A/5975C GC/MS equipped with an Agilent DB-WAXcapillary column (30 m x 0.25 mm ID x 0.25 μm) (Agilent Technologies, CA). The analysis involved quantifying the quantities of 39 free fatty acids with medium and long chains (specifically, C6-C24).