A genome-wide association study identifies candidate genes for sleep disturbances in depressed individuals

This study aimed to identify candidate loci and genes related to sleep disturbances in depressed individuals and clarify the co-occurrence of sleep disturbances and depression from the genetic perspective.

The study subjects (including 58,256 self-reported depressed individuals and 6,576 participants with PHQ-9 score ≥ 10, respectively) were collected from the UK Biobank, which were determined based on the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and self-reported depression status, respectively. Sleep related traits included chronotype, insomnia, snoring and daytime dozing. Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of sleep related traits in depressed individuals were conducted by PLINK 2.0 adjusting age, sex, Townsend deprivation index and 10 principal components as covariates. The CAUSALdb database was used to explore the mental traits associated with the candidate genes identified by the GWAS.

GWAS detected 15 loci significantly associated with chronotype in the subjects with self-reported depression, such as rs12736689 at RNASEL (P = 1.00 × 10^- 09), rs509476 at RGS16 (P = 1.58 × 10^- 09) and rs1006751 at RFX4 (P = 1.54 × 10^- 08). 9 candidate loci were identified in the subjects with PHQ-9 ≥ 10, of which 2 loci were associated with insomnia such as rs115379847 at EVC2 (P = 3.50 × 10^- 08), and 7 loci were associated with daytime dozing, such as rs140876133 at SMYD3 (P = 3.88 × 10^- 08) and rs139156969 at ROBO2 (P = 3.58 × 10^- 08). Multiple identified genes, such as RNASEL, RGS16, RFX4 and ROBO2 were reported to be associated with chronotype, depression or cognition in previous studies.

Our study identified several candidate genes related to sleep disturbances in depressed individuals, which provided new clues for understanding the biological mechanism underlying the co-occurrence of depression and sleep disorders.