Association of polymorphisms of A260G and A386G in DAZL gene with male infertility: a meta-analysis and systemic review

To investigate the association of single nucleotide polymorphism 260 and 386 (SNP260 and SNP386) gene with male infertility, an electronic search was performed to identify case-control studies evaluating the relationship of SNP260 or SNP386 of deleted in azoospermia-like (DAZL) and male infertility. Review Manager 5 was used to process the meta-analysis and other statistical analysis. A total of 139 records were retrieved, of which 13 case-control studies with total 2715 patients and 1835 normozoospermic men were included. SNP260 was found not to play a functional role in male oligo/azoospermia either for Caucasians or for Asians. But for SNP386, models of allele (A/G), dominant (AA/AG + GG), co-dominant (AA/AG) and super-dominant (AA + GG/AG) had a strong correlation to spermatogenic failure with related odds ratio being 0.15 (95% confidence interval [95% CI] 0.07 to 0.34, P < 0.00001), 0.16 (95% CI 0.07 to 0.35, P < 0.00001), 0.15 (95% CI 0.06 to 0.33, P < 0.00001) and 0.15 (95% CI 0.06 to 0.33, P < 0.00001), respectively. Moreover, this correlation was only found in the Chinese Han population (decreasing around 85% risk of oligo/azoospermia infertility) and not found in India, Japan, and Caucasian countries. Our analysis demonstrated that SNP260 of DAZL did not contribute to oligo/azoospermia while SNP386 was correlated to male infertility. However, this correlation was only found in China with a country-specific and ethnicity-specific manner.