Nutritional and non-nutritional factors may affect male infertility through epigenetic mechanisms

Introduction: Infertility rate is globally increasing. It is estimated that approximately 15% of couples in reproductive age have troubles conceiving. Half of these couples present with problems related to male infertility or subfertility, alone or in combination with female problems. During the last decade, infertility has been studied from a multifactorial perspective, which includes interactions between different genetics, epigenetics, biochemical and physiological situations of the patients. Objective: The present review aims to describe epigenetic mechanisms that can be modulated by nutritional aspects and which are related to the aetiology of male infertility and transgenerational inheritance. Materials and method: Extensive search of scientific publications was performed in specialized electronic databases: NBCI, Elsevier, Scielo, Scirus and Science Direct. Results and conclusion: Several published works have shown the importance of nutritional status in man's fertility, and more specifically, the ability of diet components to modify the epigenetic profiles, affecting not only their fertility, but also increasing the possibility to be transmitted to the offspring. This mechanism has been called transgenerational inheritance.