Exploratory Cross-Cohort Transcriptomic Comparison of Coronary Artery Disease and Non-Obstructive Azoospermia

Coronary artery disease (CAD) and non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA) have distinct aetiologies. We examined whether separately analysed public transcriptomic cohorts contained overlapping exploratory candidate signals without assuming a shared causal mechanism. We re-analysed five Gene Expression Omnibus datasets using differential-expression screening, weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA), an archived neural-network candidate ranking, xCell enrichment scoring, and single-cell transcriptomic mapping. Nominal differential-expression screening identified 978 CAD-associated and 2562 NOA-associated candidate transcripts. WGCNA showed a moderate correlation between the MElightyellow module and NOA status (r = 0.58, p = 0.007) in GSE45887, a small, imbalanced, non-independent subset of GSE45885. An archived neural-network (NNET) ranking prioritised HSPA1B, PLCL2, ISLR2, STRN, and AQP7 for descriptive analyses; the ranking was generated from the same 20 specimens and is treated as heuristic. xCell produced marker-gene enrichment scores rather than direct measurements of cell abundance or function. Single-cell mapping was descriptive because GSE149512 combined heterogeneous NOA aetiologies with paediatric and adult comparator tissues. The analyses generate hypotheses from separate CAD and NOA cohorts. They do not establish a shared causal pathway, a sex- or age-independent association, temporal sequence, clinical diagnostic utility, or direct correspondence between testicular and coronary cell states.