Genetic Correlation Analysis Suggests Association between Increased Self-Reported Sleep Duration in Adults and Schizophrenia and Type 2 Diabetes

Abstract

Study Objectives: We sought to examine how much of the heritability of self-report sleep duration is tagged by common genetic variation in populations of European ancestry and to test if the common variants contributing to sleep duration are also associated with other diseases and traits. Methods: We utilized linkage disequilibrium (LD)-score regression to estimate the heritability tagged by common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the CHARGE consortium genome-wide association study (GWAS) of self-report sleep duration. We also used bivariate LD-score regression to investigate the genetic correlation of sleep duration with other publicly available GWAS datasets. Results: We show that 6% (SE = 1%) of the variance in self-report sleep duration in the CHARGE study is tagged by common SNPs in European populations. Furthermore, we find evidence of a positive genetic correlation (rG) between sleep duration and type 2 diabetes (rG = 0.26, P = 0.02), and between sleep duration and schizophrenia (rG = 0.19, P = 0.01). Conclusions: Our results show that increased sample sizes will identify more common variants for self-report sleep duration; however, the heritability tagged is small when compared to other traits and diseases. These results also suggest that those who carry variants that increase risk to type 2 diabetes and schizophrenia are more likely to report longer sleep duration.

Genome-wide association analyses of sleep disturbance traits identify new loci and highlight shared genetics with neuropsychiatric and metabolic traits

“…risk of schizophrenia (r G =0.29, p=10 -13 ), as suggested by previous reports 18,47,68 . Furthermore, a schizophrenia GRS (96 variants) was associated with longer sleep duration (β(se)=1.44(0.36)…”

GWAS in 446,118 European adults identifies 78 genetic loci for self-reported habitual sleep duration supported by accelerometer-derived estimates

“…Mendelian Randomization (MR) analyses to test for causal links between sleep duration and genetically correlated traits suggested longer sleep duration is causal for increased risk of schizophrenia [weighted median: 0.008 (0.003) P =4.29 x 10 -3 ; inverse variance weighted: 0.008 (0.003) P =1.82 x 10 -2 ], consistent with previous findings 24,49,50 ( Figure 4, Supplementary Table 28 ). No other causal links were identified.…”

Genome-wide association analyses of sleep disturbance traits identify new loci and highlight shared genetics with neuropsychiatric and metabolic traits

“…Genetic correlations demonstrated a strong biological link between longer sleep duration and risk of schizophrenia (r G =0.29, p =10 -13 ), as suggested by previous reports 18,47,68 . Furthermore, a schizophrenia GRS (96 variants) was associated with longer sleep duration (β(se)=1.44(0.36) mins/allele, p =2.56×10 -4 [2.3 hr inter-quartile range], although a variety of sleep behaviors are seen in schizophrenia patients 69-71 .…”