Insomnia
Genetic risk for insomnia runs, in the same population, alongside genetic risk for major depressive disorder and type 2 diabetes — evidence that sleeplessness shares real biology with conditions far outside sleep itself.
What this condition connects to
Insomnia — persistent difficulty falling or staying asleep — affects a substantial share of adults worldwide and carries real downstream health costs. Twin studies have long shown a heritable component; this page holds 11 variants from four studies, from the first that identified genes to the largest so far.
A very large biobank study of sleep disturbance broadly
A 2017 study analyzed self-reported sleep duration, insomnia symptoms and excessive daytime sleepiness together in 112,586 UK Biobank participants — insomnia symptoms being one of several related sleep-disturbance traits examined. It found a female-specific insomnia-symptoms locus near CYCL1 (this page's rs5922858), among other loci found in males and in the combined analysis that are not on this page. Beyond individual loci, the study's headline finding was about shared genetics across categories entirely: longer sleep duration was genetically correlated with schizophrenia risk, and excessive daytime sleepiness was genetically correlated with body-mass index and waist circumference — sleep traits sharing real biological ground with psychiatric and metabolic conditions, not just describing sleep on its own.
A study specifically of diagnosed insomnia disorder, in soldiers
A second study focused specifically on insomnia as a diagnosed disorder, using genetic data from 3,237 cases and 14,414 controls across three ancestral groups within the US Army's STARRS study. SNP-based heritability for lifetime insomnia disorder was modest but statistically significant. The study found one genome-wide-significant chromosomal locus and one gene-based signal, in RFX3 — this page's rs34670506 and rs7138947 (NTF3) come from this study. Its more striking finding is genetic correlation, not a single locus: genetic risk for insomnia in this cohort correlated positively with major depressive disorder and with type 2 diabetes, and negatively with morningness chronotype and subjective well-being. The study's own stated conclusion is that insomnia-associated genetic loci may contribute to a range of health conditions well beyond sleep itself, not simply to sleeplessness on its own.
The largest study: 554 loci
Watanabe et al. 2022, in Nature Genetics, nearly doubled the sample of earlier work to 593,724 people with insomnia and 1,771,286 without, and identified 554 risk loci, 364 of them new. With so many loci, the authors' main contribution was a way of choosing among them: of 3,898 genes implicated, they prioritised 289, which were expressed most in brain tissue and gathered in gene sets for synaptic signalling and neuronal differentiation. Five of its positions are on this page: rs10947428 in ITPR3, rs10846577 in DNAH10, rs8180817 in FOXP2, rs55777621 in PPP1R10 and rs61765651.
Two more positions, two more studies
The 2017 study above also analysed excessive daytime sleepiness, and two of its positions for that trait are here: rs73536079 in AR and rs142261172 in TMEM132B. And rs9894577 near HEXIM1 comes from the meta-analysis in a 2020 study that read insomnia off the diagnostic codes of 18,055 patients in a hospital biobank — 3,135 with insomnia — and combined its results with two earlier studies to reach 13 significant loci. That study also found insomnia genetically correlated with alcohol, nicotine and opioid use disorders.
In the news
2026-01-01 · Sleep 2026, PMID:41065713
Insomnia shares genetic risk loci with seven psychiatric disorders, largest study yet finds
Verified directly against the paper's own abstract via Europe PMC (PMID:41065713, published January 2026 in Sleep). Analyzed genome-wide association data from over 314,000 insomnia cases and up to 449,855 cases across 12 psychiatric conditions. Found significant genetic correlations between insomnia and seven disorders -- ADHD, anorexia nervosa, anxiety, autism spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia -- and identified 70 shared genomic loci (97 candidate SNPs), many novel. GABAergic synapse signaling emerged as a central shared pathway, with eight specific cortical neuron subtypes implicated. This is a much larger, more detailed confirmation of exactly the pattern this page's own source studies already reported at smaller scale (genetic correlation between insomnia risk and depression, type 2 diabetes and schizophrenia-adjacent traits) -- filed at the condition level since the paper's 70 loci are not yet individually confirmed against this page's own three variants (matches.variants left empty).
From our blog
Clinical detail
What is actually diagnosed and treated here
Insomnia is diagnosed clinically, from sleep history and its impact on daytime functioning — not by genotype. None of the 11 variants on this page are used by any guideline to diagnose insomnia or select treatment.
The loci described above come from population-level genetic studies of tens of thousands of people. Their most substantial finding is not any single gene but the genetic overlap between insomnia risk and depression, type 2 diabetes and general well-being — evidence for shared biology at a population level, not a way to predict whether, or why, any one person struggles to sleep.
Related variants MyGeneLog™ checks for
What a 23andMe/AncestryDNA export or raw VCF can and can't tell you about Insomnia comes down to these specific, well-studied positions — not a diagnosis.
Which ancestries this evidence comes from
The studies behind these variants recruited participants from different ancestries — a result found in one population doesn't always transfer to another. Based on 5 of 12 linked studies with a resolved discovery ancestry.
Sources
Databases, guidelines and references
Quoting this page
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Insomnia. MyGeneLog™. https://www.mygenelog.com/conditions/insomnia
Questions about Insomnia
What is insomnia?
Persistent difficulty falling or staying asleep, affecting a substantial share of adults worldwide with real downstream health costs.
Is insomnia genetically linked to other health conditions?
Yes, and this is the most substantial finding across both studies behind this page: genetic risk for insomnia correlates with genetic risk for major depressive disorder and type 2 diabetes, and (in a related sleep-trait study) longer sleep duration correlates with schizophrenia risk -- evidence of shared biology, not coincidence.
What is the strongest single genetic locus for insomnia?
No single locus dominates. The largest study behind this page found 554 loci, and the earlier ones each a small number (CYCL1, RFX3, NTF3 among them), all with modest individual effect sizes -- the genetic-correlation findings are more substantial than any one gene.
Can these variants predict whether I will develop insomnia?
No. Insomnia is diagnosed clinically, from sleep history and its impact on daytime functioning. These are population-level genetic findings, not a way to predict an individual case.
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