MONDAY, February 15, 2021 (HealthDay News) – If you want to nap in the afternoon, your genes may explain your love for daytime naps, researchers say.
For their study, the researchers analyzed data from the UK biobank, which contains genetic information from nearly 453,000 people who were asked how often they nap during the day.
The genome-wide association study identified 123 regions in the human genome that are associated with daytime nap. Many genes nearby or in these regions are known to play a role in sleep.
A subset of participants wore activity monitors that provided data on daytime inactivity, which may be an indicator of a nap. These data suggest that the information about the nap reported by the participants themselves was correct, according to the researchers.
“That gave an extra level of confidence that what we found was real and not an artifact,” said study co-lead author Hassan Saeed Dashti of the Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
The researchers also replicated their findings in an analysis of genetic data from more than 541,000 people collected by consumer genetic testing company 23andMe.
The results show “that nap during the day is biological, and not just an environmental or behavioral decision,” said Dashti in a hospital press release.
According to Iyas Daghlas, co-lead author of the study, a medical student at Harvard Medical School, several nap-related gene variants are linked to signaling through a neuropeptide called orexin, which plays a role in alertness.
“This pathway is known to be implicated in rare sleep disorders such as narcolepsy. However, our results show that minor disturbances along the path can explain why some people nap more than others,” said Daghlas.
Some of these gene variants are also linked to risk factors for heart health, such as a large waist size and high blood pressure. However, more research is needed on these links, according to the report published February 10 in the journal Nature Communications.
The researchers also identified at least three possible factors associated with daytime napping: some people need more sleep than others; People who wake up early may need to take a nap to catch up on their sleep. Taking naps during the day can make up for the previous night’s sleep.
According to co-senior author Marta Garaulet of the Institute of Physiology at the University of Murcia in Spain, “future work can help develop personalized recommendations for the siesta”.
More information
The Sleep Foundation has more to do with napping.
SOURCE: Massachusetts General Hospital, news release, Feb. 10, 2021
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