Metabolomics: a state-of-the-art technology for better understanding of male infertility

Male factor infertility affects approximately half of the infertile couples, in spite of many years of research on male infertility treatment and diagnosis; several outstanding questions remain to be addressed. In this regard, metabolomics as a novel field of omics has been suggested to be applied for male infertility problems. A variety of terms associated with metabolite quantity and quality have been established to demonstrate mixtures of metabolites. Despite metabolomics and metabolite analyses have been around more than decades, a limited number of studies concerning male infertility have been carried out. In this review, we summarised the latest finding in metabolomics techniques and metabolomics biomarkers correlated with male infertility. The rapid progress of a variety of metabolomics platforms, such as nonoptical and optical spectroscopy, could ease separation, recognition, classification and quantification of several metabolites and their metabolic pathways. Here, we recommend that the novel biomarkers determined in the course of metabolomics analysis may stand for potential application of treatment and future clinical practice.