The Relationship Between Genetic Risk for Insomnia and Psychiatric Disorders

Insomnia has a bi-directional relationship with both psychiatric and addictive disorders, and recent twin studies have shown an overlap in the genetic risk between insomnia and these conditions. Given the multiple single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identified with small effect sizes in prior genome-wide association studies (GWAS), a polygenic risk score (PRS) estimates the disorder’s overall genetic risk using these SNPs. This narrative review evaluates the emerging data on the relationship between the genetic risk for insomnia and these disorders.

The studies show that PRS of insomnia is positively associated with sleep disturbance symptoms, alcohol use disorder, marijuana use, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

This emerging evidence shows a shared genetic risk between insomnia and these disorders. Future studies should compute insomnia PRS with larger sample sizes, elaborate on how the PRS interacts with other risk factors for disease, and identify underlying subtypes of these disorders.