the role of methylation status of gstm1 5’utr in iranian infertile men with azoospermia

objective: in about 50% of infertile couples a male factor can be found to be present either alone or in addition to other female factors. a new molecular mechanism recently revealed to be involved in infertility is epigenetic pattern modification like as aberrant methylation. this mechanism can change or even silence gene expression. on the other hand, gstm1 (glutathione s-transferase mu 1) is shown to be important in transport of hormones and sexual steroids. recent studies are in favor of implication of gstm1 in male infertility. based on the role of this gene in spermatogenesis, and protection of sperms, proving its epigenetic modification in male infertility and its implication in other diseases were reported. we explored its implication in iranian men with infertility. materials and methods: this study is performed on peripheral blood samples of 50 fertile and 50 infertile men as well as 32 testicular tissue samples of infertile men with non obstructive azoospermia and 5 infertile men with obstructive azoospermia. methylation detection method used in this study is methylation specific pcr. results: regarding gstm1 gene in both cases (infertile men with non obstructive azoospermia) and normal control (fertile men) blood samples showed both methylated and unmethylated alleles. in tissue samples, 2 out of 32 testicular tissues showed only methylated and other samples showed both methylated and unmethylated alleles. conclusion: this result shows a trend to methylation in iranian men with infertility. however, statistically this difference is not significant (p-value=0.3). this study, in contrast to a previous report