Background: Compromised sexual health is a major rehabilitative barrier for men with lower-spinal cord injury (SCI). Although studies have revealed decreased sperm motility, the quantitative biochemical changes that underlie the infertility mechanism remain poorly understood.
Methods: We employed a nontargeted approach combining 800 MHz hydrogen nuclear magnetic resonance ((1)H NMR) spectroscopy and ultra-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS) with pattern recognition methods to analyze seminal fluid metabolite profiles in 10 men with and 8 without SCI above thoracic vertebra 10 (T10).
Results: The metabolic phenotype for SCI could be predicted from the (1)H NMR data. The median concentration of uridine in fertile controls was 1.55 mmol/L (range 1.0-5.0 mmol/L), but was undetectable by both NMR and MS in all but 2 individuals from the SCI group, one who later fathered a child without assisted fertility techniques.
Conclusions: We hypothesize that uridine is likely to be an essential precursor to metabolites required for capacitation and is a potential marker for the prognosis of post-SCI functional fertility recovery. We derived the term "seminal oligouridinosis" to describe this newly identified condition.