Evaluating of HERV-K genes expression in sperm samples collected from infertile men compared to fertile individuals: A case control study

Abstract

Having detrimental effects on health-care system, infertility can be related to some risk factors, especially different kinds of viruses. Human Endogenous Retrovirus-k (HERV-K) env, gag, np9 and rec can be considered as one of these viral agents which is likely to cause male infertility, and we attempted to evaluate it. This case-control study was conducted on sperm samples of 96 participants in Imam Hossein Hospital, Tehran, Iran from January 2020 to December 2021. After extracting the RNA of these samples, we evaluated the expression of HERV-K env, np9, rec, gag using Quantitative Real-Time PCR (QRT-PCR). Our data revealed that HERV-K, rec, np9 and env in abnormal samples were higher than normal ones. However, the opposite trend was true for gag expression since a meaningful reduction can be observed in abnormal samples. The results of our study suggested that there is a plausible correlation between the expression level of this virus’s genes, and the progression of infertility. We proposed this marker as a promising biomarker to diagnose infertility. However, further studies are required to support these results.