Abstract
BACKGROUND: Having detrimental effects on the 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 that are likely to cause male infertility, and we attempted to evaluate it. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 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 form these samples, we evaluated the expression of HERV-K env, np9, rec, and gag using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). RESULTS: 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. CONCLUSIONS: 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.