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Methods:

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).

Results:

We found a significant and strong genetic correlation between insomnia and increased neuroticism (r g= 0.47, p= 7.01 x10-23) and depressive symptoms (r g= 0.50, p= 2.30 x10-17). We found neuroticism was also genetically correlated with difficulty getting up in the morning (r g 0.28, p= 4.46 x10-10), short sleep duration (r g= 0.29, p= 1.31 x10-6), and increased daytime sleepiness (r g 0.21, p= 1.25 x10-5) and daytime napping …