Male infertility has become an important public health problem worldwide. Nowadays the diagnosis of
male infertility frequently depends on the results of semen quality or requires more invasive surgical intervention. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a novel approach for early diagnosis of
male infertility. According to the presence or absence of normal sexual function, the
male infertility is classified into two phenotypes,
erectile dysfunction (ED) and semen abnormalities (SA). The aim of this study was to investigate the GC-MS plasma profiles of infertile male having
erectile dysfunction (ED) and having semen abnormalities (SA) and discover the potential
biomarkers. The plasma samples from healthy controls (HC) (n=61) and
infertility patients with ED (n=26) or with SA (n=44) were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) for discrimination and screening potential
biomarkers. The partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was performed on GC-MS dataset. The results showed that HC could be discriminated from infertile cases having SA (AUC=86.96%, sensitivity=78.69%, specificity=84.09%, accuracy=80.95%) and infertile cases having ED (AUC=94.33%, sensitivity=80.33%, specificity=100%, accuracy=87.36%). Some potential
biomarkers were successfully discovered by two commonly used variable selection methods, variable importance on projection (VIP) and original coefficients of PLS-DA (β). 1,5-Anhydro-sorbitol and α-hydroxyisovaleric
acid were identified as the potential
biomarkers for distinguishing HC from the
male infertility patients. Meanwhile,
lactate,
glutamate and
cholesterol were the found to be the important variables to distinguish between patients with
erectile dysfunction from those with semen abnormalities. The plasma metabolomics may be developed as a novel approach for fast, noninvasive, and acceptable diagnosis and characterization of
male infertility.