A Genome-Wide Genetic Association Study of Sleep Duration and Longevity

Source https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2024/03/a-genome-wide-genetic-association-study-of-sleep-duration-and-longevity/

Researchers here use Mendelian randomization to attempt to better understand the relationship between sleep duration and later life mortality. As is well established, a short sleep duration correlates with raised mortality. The point of performing this sort of study of genetic variants and their relationship with specific outcomes is to try to tease out evidence for causation. Epidemiological studies can only provide correlations between sleep duration and increased mortality risk, but genetic studies can provide at least some support for the idea that short sleep duration actually causes a meaningful degree of that increased mortality risk, and isn’t just a side-effect of some sort.

Poor sleep health is associated with a wide array of increased risk for cardiovascu…