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Data from: Sleep, major depressive disorder and Alzheimer’s disease: a Mendelian randomisation study

Data files

Oct 28, 2020 version files 3.05 MB

Abstract

Objective

To explore the causal relationships between sleep, major depressive disorder (MDD), and Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Methods

We conducted bi-directional two-sample Mendelian randomisation analyses. Genetic associations were obtained from the largest genome-wide association studies currently available in UK Biobank (N=446,118), the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (N=18,759), and the International Genomics of Alzheimer’s Project (N=63,926). We used the inverse variance weighted Mendelian randomisation method to estimate the causal effects, and the weighted median and MR-Egger for sensitivity analyses to test for pleiotropic effects.

Results

We found that higher risk of AD was significantly associated with being a “morning person” (odds ratio (OR)=1.01, P=0.001), shorter sleep duration (self-reported: β=-0.006, P=1.9×10-4; accelerometer-based: β=-0.015, P=6.9×10-5), less likely to report long sleep (β=-0.003, P=7.3×10-7), earlier timing of the least active 5 hours (β=-0.024, P=1.7×10-13), and a smaller number of sleep episodes (β=-0.025, P=5.7×10-14) after adjusting for multiple comparisons. We also found that higher risk of AD was associated with lower risk of insomnia (OR=0.99, P=7×10-13). However, we did not find evidence that these abnormal sleep patterns were causally related to AD or a significant causal relationship between MDD and risk of AD.

Conclusion

We found that AD may causally influence sleep patterns. However, we did not find evidence supporting a causal role of disturbed sleep patterns in AD or evidence for a causal relationship between MDD and AD risk.