Cell-free and intracellular nucleic acids: new non-invasive biomarkers to explore male infertility.

Male infertility is a devastating problem that affects many couples worldwide. However, the molecular mechanisms and causes of idiopathic male infertility remain unclear. Circulating cell-free nucleic acids have an important role in human physiology and emerging evidence suggests that they play a role in male infertility. This review summarizes recent results on cell-free and intracellular nucleic acids in male infertility and discusses their potential use as biomarkers of male infertility in the clinical practice.

L'infertilité masculine est un problème qui touche de nombreux couples. Cependant, aujourd'hui les mécanismes moléculaires et les causes de l'infertilité masculine idiopathique ne sont pas élucidés. Les acides nucléiques circulant ont un rôle important dans la physiologie et des évidences suggèrent qu'ils jouent un rôle dans l'infertilité masculine. L'objectif de cette revue est de mettre en avant les nouvelles avancées scientifiques sur les acides nucléiques circulant et non-circulant en lien avec l'infertilité masculine et de fournir une vue d'ensemble de leurs utilisation comme biomarqueurs en pratique clinique.

Kinetics of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T and I differ in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction treated by primary coronary intervention.

PURPOSE: Cardiac biomarkers including troponins are the cornerstone of the biological definition of acute myocardial infarction. New high-sensitivity cardiac assays determining troponin T (hs-cTnT) as well as I ((hs-cTnI) from Abbott and s-cTnI from Siemens) raise concerns because of their unclear kinetics following the peak. AIMS: This study aims to compare kinetics of creatine kinases, hs-cTnT, hs-cTnI and s-cTnI in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) treated by percutaneous coronary intervention. METHODS: We prospectively studied 106 consecutive patients admitted in our institution for STEMI and treated by percutaneous coronary intervention. We evaluated for all the patients simultaneously kinetics of creatine kinases, hs-cTnT (Roche) and two different cTnIs (hs-cTnI from Abbott and s-cTnI from Siemens). Modelling of kinetics was realized using mixed effects with cubic splines. RESULTS: Kinetics of markers showed a first peak at 10.7h (8.0-12.0) for creatine kinases, 11.8h (10.4-13.3) for hs-cTnT (Roche); 11.8h (10.7-11.8) for hs-cTnI from Abbott and 10.2h (8.7-11.6) for s-cTnI from Siemens, respectively. This peak was followed by a nearly log linear decrease for hs-cTnI/s-cTnI and creatine kinases in contrast to hs-cTnT, which appeared with a biphasic shape curve marked by a second peak at 76.9h (69.5-82.8). The analysis of the decrease in percentage of the peak value at 77h showed that hs-cTnT follows a twice lower decrease than other markers. CONCLUSION: Kinetics of hs-cTnT, hs-cTnI and s-cTnI differ significantly with a linear decrease regarding both cTnI assays contrasting with a biphasic shape curve for hs-cTnT. This is of importance for clinical management of patients in routine settings especially in follow-up after STEMI including the suspicion of reinfarction.