Polygenic Risk for Insomnia in Adolescents of Diverse Ancestry.

Tengfei Ma,Honglei Chen,Xiaoran Tong,Qing Lu

doi:10.3389/fgene.2021.654717

Abstract

Background: Insomnia is a common mental disorder, affecting nearly one fifth of the pre-adult population in the United States. The recent, largest genome-wide association study (GWAS) conducted on the United Kingdom Biobank cohort identified hundreds of significant single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), allowing the epidemiologists to quantify individual genetic predisposition in the subsequent studies via the polygenic risk scoring technique. The nucleotide polymorphisms and risk scoring, while being able to generalize to other adult populations of European origin, are not yet tested on pediatric and adolescent populations of diverse racial-ethnic backgrounds, and our study intends to fill these gaps.Materials and Methods: We took the summary of the same United Kingdom Biobank study and conducted a polygenic risk score (PRS) analysis on a multi-ethnicity, pre-adult population provided by the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.Results: The PRSs according to the significant nucleotide polymorphisms found in white British adults is a strong predictor of insomnia in children of similar European background but lacks power in non-European groups.Conclusions: Through polygenic risk scoring, the knowledge of insomnia genetics summarized from a white adult study population is transferable to a younger age group, which aids the search of actionable targets of early insomnia prevention. Yet population stratification may prevent the easy generalization across ethnic lines; therefore, it is necessary to conduct group specific studies to aid people of non-European genetic background.

Highlights

Insomnia is one of the most prevalent health complaints in medical practice and is marked predominantly by dissatisfaction with sleep quantity or quality (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2016)
This study is aimed to validate whether the polygenic risk score (PRS) derived from adults of European ancestry could generalize to parent-reported insomnia severity scores in an adolescent cohort
We examined the accuracy of this PRS in predicting other common sleeping disorders, including sleep breathing disorders, disorders of arousal, sleep– wake transition disorders, disorders of excessive somnolence, and sleep hyperhidrosis (Bruni et al, 1996)

Summary

Introduction

Insomnia is one of the most prevalent health complaints in medical practice and is marked predominantly by dissatisfaction with sleep quantity or quality (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2016). The current criteria for the diagnosis of insomnia, according to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), comprises difficulties falling asleep at bedtime and maintaining sleep and inability to return to sleep after early awakening in the morning, for at least 3 months Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2016) This is different from the fourth edition of DSM, which has less stringent criteria for insomnia diagnosis, requiring the symptoms lasting only for 1 month (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Insomnia is a common mental disorder, affecting nearly one fifth of the pre-adult population in the United States. The nucleotide polymorphisms and risk scoring, while being able to generalize to other adult populations of European origin, are not yet tested on pediatric and adolescent populations of diverse racial-ethnic backgrounds, and our study intends to fill these gaps

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Conclusion