Dr. Pastuszac at Baylor College of Medicine has discovered two new genetic causes of male infertility.
There was one previous gene deletion noted on the Y chromosome. Previously, the Y-chromosome microdeletion and major chromosomal errors were known to cause severe male factor infertility. The frequency of either of these is under 5 percent of infertile men.
Now the Glut-3 and Caspr5 abnormalities have been identified in a few infertile men. Future work will determine how important these are. It would be a reasonable guess that in the future many more genetic causes will be found for currently unexplained infertility in men. We are very pleased that Dr. Larry Lipshultz was the professor in charge of this very innovative research. He was a colleague of Dr. Massey‘s at the University of Pennsylvania years ago and has made many contributions to the puzzling issues surrounding male infertility.
