Potential biomarkers of non-obstructive azoospermia identified in microarray gene expression analysis

We analyzed gene expression profiles of human testicular biopsies in men with idiopathic nonobstructive azoospermia. Using new generation oligonucleotide microarray platform GeneChip® Human Gene 1.0 ST, we identified genes which could be potential biomarkers of azoospermia and molecular indicators that could determine a particular stage of impaired spermatogenesis. Thus, we shed light on genes which were had so far been weakly characterized and which were had never related to infertility before. These studies also included the comparative analysis of the hierarchical clustering of gene expression profile with histopathological data provided for azoospermic patients. We analyzed 31 testicular biopsy samples with Affymetrix Human Gene 1.0 ST microarrays. 27 of them were obtained from patients with various types of NOA and 4 with normal spermatogenesis.