A previous genomewide association study of nonobstructive azoospermia (NOA) in the Han Chinese population identified three risk loci (rs12097821, rs2477686, and rs10842262) and provided strong evidence for a genetic influence in male infertility. However, recently, a follow-up study of these single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) loci in the Japanese population showed that none of them were significantly associated with NOA. Therefore, we conducted an association study, consisting of 550 NOA cases and 555 normal controls, to further validate whether the risk of those three SNPs still existed in an independent Han Chinese male population. The association studies did not support the association of rs12097821 and rs2477686 with NOA for both genotype and allele distributions, but rs10842262 in the SOX5 gene was significantly associated with NOA (chi square = 9.31; P = 0.0095 and chi square = 9.27; P = 0.0023, respectively). Our study provides genetic evidence for SOX5 polymorphism in NOA, contributing to predicting males at high risk of NOA in Han Chinese population. Considering genetic differences among populations, future validating studies in independent samples are suggested.
Keywords: association study; nonobstructive azoospermia (NOA); single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP).