"The genes of insomnia"

Do you suffer from insomnia? Genes are guilty

Researchers have blamed genes for insomnia in humans

Evgenia Efimova, "Vesti", based on the materials of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam: Insomnia genes found

Everyone has suffered from sleepless nights at least once in their life. And very often people associate insomnia with some internal experiences (stress and anxiety), which do not allow a person to fall asleep. However, scientists say, sometimes this condition can be associated with genes.

Researchers, trying to find the biological mechanism responsible for the sleep disorder, found seven special [variants – VM] genes. The latter increase the likelihood of insomnia in humans. Scientific work (Hammerschlag et al., Genome-wide association analysis of insomnia complaints identifies risk genes and genetic overlap with psychiatric and metabolic traits) shows that insomnia is not only a psychological condition.

Thanks to the analysis of samples of more than 113 thousand people, an international team of scientists focused their attention on seven specific genes. It turned out that they play a role in exocytosis, a process in which cells produce molecules to interact with their environment, and the regulation of transcription (the process of reading genetic information from DNA, in which the DNA nucleotide sequence is encoded as an RNA nucleotide sequence).

Moreover, one of the identified genes, MEIS1, was previously associated with two other sleep disorders – periodic limb movement syndrome and restless legs syndrome.

According to Professor Eus Van Someren from the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience, one of the lead authors of the study, many today study the consequences, risks and even the prevalence of insomnia, but only a few study its causes.

"It is very often believed that this ailment is a "problem in the head." But our research reveals other reasons. The problem of insomnia is also hidden in the genes," says the professor.

It is noteworthy that the coincidence of the "insomnia genes" with the genes responsible for the development of anxiety disorders, depression and neuroticism was revealed. This suggests that insomnia is not necessarily a secondary symptom of other disorders: they are related to each other more fundamentally.

"This is an interesting finding, because these signs tend to go hand in hand with insomnia. And now we know that part of the reason is that they are connected by a common genetic basis," says Anke Hammerschlag, another author of the study.

The study also found that "risk genes" manifest themselves differently in men and women. So, experts suggest that gender may play an important role in the manifestation of various biological mechanisms that lead to this disease.

"We also found out, thanks to the data of people who are mostly over 50 years old, that about 33 percent of women suffer from insomnia, and only 24 percent of men are susceptible to the same ailment," says Professor Danielle Posthuma.

According to the authors of the work, the study has come closer to understanding the biological mechanisms that cause a predisposition to insomnia. Consequently, the scientific work published in Nature Genetics will be able to help develop new ways of treating this ailment in the future, experts say.

By the way, apps that are actually designed to monitor its quality can also disrupt sleep, other scientists say. We also add that lack of sleep makes a person forgetful and even able to cause "memories" of events that actually did not happen. Moreover, lack of sleep can contribute to the development of malignant tumors.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  15.06.2017