Association study of human leucocyte antigen-A gene with idiopathic male infertility in Han population of China

Human leucocyte antigen (HLA) is a complex gene family that contains several highly polymorphic genes. Some studies have reported HLA-A gene to have a strong role in idiopathic male infertility in Japanese and Yugoslavia populations. Prompted by these findings, we investigated the distributions of HLA-A gene to ascertain their associations with idiopathic male infertility in Chinese population. Polymerase chain reaction-sequence-based typing (PCR-SBT) method was used for DNA typing at HLA-A locus in 109 patients with idiopathic male infertility and 152 healthy controls in Han male population of Shaanxi Province, situated in north-western China. In total, we detected 23 HLA-A alleles in all infertile patients, 22 HLA-A alleles in control subjects. However, no significant differences of these allelic frequencies were found between the patients and the control subjects, suggesting that the HLA-A gene was unlikely a major risk factor of idiopathic male infertility in this sample population. As different populations have different HLA polymorphisms, investigation into the relationship of other HLA genes and idiopathic male infertility in our population is needed in the future.