Consistently sleeping less than five hours a night could increase the risk of depression, research suggests.
But those with a greater genetic predisposition to depression were not more likely to have short sleep. "Using genetic susceptibility to disease, we determined that sleep likely precedes depressive symptoms, rather than the inverse." Senior author Dr Olesya Ajnakina, UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, said: "Short and long sleep durations, along with depression, are major contributors to public health burden that are highly heritable.
According to the findings, people who slept for more than nine hours were 1.5 times more likely to develop depressive symptoms than those who sleep an average of seven hours. "This study lays important groundwork for future investigations on the intersection of genetics, sleep, and depressive symptoms."More than 10 per cent slept for less than five hours a night at the start of the study period, rising to more than 15 per cent at the end of the study.
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