ArticleSystems biology in reproductive medicine2023
Exploring the internal exposome of seminal plasma with semen quality and live birth: A Pilot Study.
Article in Systems biology in reproductive medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of vasectomy on the seminal microbiome: possible implications and source of microbes.Human reproduction open · 2026Article
- Non-Targeted Analysis of Environmental Contaminants and Their Associations with Semen Health Factors in Men from New York City.Environment & health (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Article
- Associations between Sperm Epigenetic Age and Semen Parameters: An Evaluation of Clinical and Non-Clinical Cohorts.Current issues in molecular biology · 2024Article
- External exposome and all-cause mortality in European cohorts: the EXPANSE project.Frontiers in epidemiology · 2024Article
- Subfertility as Overlapping of Nutritional, Endocrine, Immune, and Cardiometabolic Dysregulations-A Study Focused on Biochemical Endophenotypes of Subfertile Couples.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- A new clustering model based on the seminal plasma/serum ratios of multiple trace element concentrations in male patients with subfertility.Reproductive medicine and biologyArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Infertility is clinically defined as the inability to achieve pregnancy within 12 months of regular unprotected sexual intercourse and affects 15% of couples worldwide. Therefore, the identification of novel biomarkers that can accurately predict male reproductive health and couples' reproductive success is of major public health significance. The objective of this pilot study is to test whether untargeted metabolomics is capable of discriminating reproductive outcomes and understand associations between the internal exposome of seminal plasma and the reproductive outcomes of semen quality and live birth among ten participants undergoing assisted reproductive technology (ART) in Springfield, MA. We hypothesize that seminal plasma offers a novel biological matrix by which untargeted metabolomics is able to discern male reproductive status and predict reproductive success. The internal exposome data was acquired using UHPLC-HR-MS on randomized seminal plasma samples at UNC at Chapel Hill. Unsupervised and supervised multivariate analyses were used to visualize the differentiation of phenotypic groups classified by men with normal or low semen quality based on World Health Organization guidelines as well as by successful ART: live birth or no live birth. Over 100 exogenous metabolites, including environmentally relevant metabolites, ingested food components, drugs and medications, and metabolites relevant to microbiome-xenobiotic interaction, were identified and annotated from the seminal plasma samples, through matching against the NC HHEAR hub in-house experimental standard library. Pathway enrichment analysis indicated that fatty acid biosynthesis and metabolism, vitamin A metabolism, and histidine metabolism were associated sperm quality; while pathways involving vitamin A metabolism, C21-steroid hormone biosynthesis and metabolism, arachidonic acid metabolism, and Omega-3 fatty acid metabolism distinguished live birth groups. Taken together, these pilot results suggest that seminal plasma is a novel matrix to study the influence of the internal exposome on reproductive health outcomes. Future research aims to increase the sample size to validate these findings.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.