A new study has documented eight specific genes that are associated with insomnia. Some of these genes might even be linked to neuropsychiatric diseases, such as schizophrenia.
Trouble in sleeping occurs when someone feels exhausted during waking hours or restless during sleeping hours and, according to researchers, the experience may be due to certain genes.
Prof. Richa Saxena, who is from Harvard Medical School and coauthor of the study, explained that several diseases happen simultaneously with sleep troubles. It was unknown before whether common genetic components contributed to both sleep problems and these conditions.
Global evaluation suggests that 30 percent of the world population suffer from some sort of trouble with sleeping, and just about 10 percent in the United States have symptoms diagnosed as insomnia.
Factors in the surroundings may also affect sleep, but so do a person's genes.
While earlier studies have identified genes that may be connected to sleep disorders, such as narcolepsy and sleep apnea, Saxena and colleagues show, for the first time, how genes are also associated with insomnia.
Insomnia-Related Genes And Other Diseases
To find out which specific genes are linked to insomnia, Saxena and her team mapped the genes of more than 112,500 European adults, who were all participants in the UK Biobank study.
The genes that they discovered were not only connected to disturbances in sleeping, but they were also associated with other health issues, such as obesity, schizophrenia, depression, insulin resistance, and the condition known as restless legs syndrome.
Schizophrenia risk was mostly seen in genes of people who tend to sleep for longer periods than the average, while insomnia risk was associated strongly in genes of those with depression, insulin resistance, and restless legs syndrome.
The genes that were linked to excessive sleepiness during daytime were also found to be connected to obesity.
Despite these findings, the researchers pointed out that not every person who suffers from disturbed or incomplete sleep is already at risk of obesity, schizophrenia, and restless legs syndrome.
Saxena said they weren't able to determine whether disturbed sleep could cause an individual to develop these disorders, or if these disorders could trigger sleep problems.
In fact, she and her colleagues believe that there are several different genes that may influence the development of sleeping issues and these other conditions.
What their findings point to, however, is that these health problems likely share the same genes and even underlying pathways.
Saxena explained that their work may not be able to directly help people to sleep better, or manage their medical conditions more effectively. Their goal was to develop and test new and better drugs in the future that could target genes that cause these sleep problems.
It may take awhile before people who suffer from disturbed sleep finally get some much-needed relief, but Saxena and her team's work in identifying the underlying genetic makeup of the problem provides new hope for these individuals.
The findings of the Harvard Medical School is featured in the journal Nature Genetics.
