0027 A GENETIC LINK BETWEEN SLEEP AND PSYCHIATRIC TRAITS

Abstract

There is mounting evidence of a relationship between sleep and psychiatric traits. Sleep and circadian disturbances are commonly observed in psychiatric conditions. However, genetic studies linking these traits are limited. To systematically study the genetic links and highlight potential causal relationships, we performed genetic correlation studies of sleep and circadian traits with psychiatric traits. Previously we performed genome-wide association studies for a variety of self-reported sleep and circadian traits in the UK Biobank (in up to 115,000 people). To probe the biological links between sleep and circadian traits with psychiatric traits, we performed genetic correlation of our GWAS results with publicly available GWAS for psychiatric traits, including neuroticism, depressive symptoms, and subjective well-being using linkage disequilibrium score regression (LDSC). We found a significant and strong genetic correlation between insomnia and increased neuroticism (rg=0.47, p=7.01x10-23) and depressive symptoms (rg=0.50, p=2.30x10-17). We found neuroticism was also genetically correlated with difficulty getting up in the morning (rg 0.28, p=4.46x10-10), short sleep duration (rg=0.29, p=1.31x10-6), and increased daytime sleepiness (rg 0.21, p=1.25x10-5) and daytime napping (rg=0.20, p=2.91x10-5). We found no genetic correlation between neuroticism and self-reported chronotype, snoring, or sleep apnea. We also found similar genetic links between our sleep traits and depressive symptoms. We were able to link the genetic underpinnings of insomnia with those of psychiatric traits, suggesting a strong biological link between sleep and psychiatric traits. Moving forward it will be important to probe the causal links between these traits.