The ability to nap is in the genes, Harvard study finds

The need to take a nap during the day might be more than a consequence of exhaustion, according to a new study by Harvard. Examining the genomes of nearly half a million people in the UK, scientists found that daytime naps are “of biological origin”.

Researchers of Massachusetts General Hospital identified 123 regions of the human genome associated with daytime naps. By digging deeper into the data, they identified three possible mechanisms within the genome that promote napping in some people and not in others.

The first two, called “Interrupted sleep” and “early morning wake-up call”, they refer to people who take a nap because they did not get enough sleep the night before or woke up at dawn. The third concerned propensity to sleep: how much sleep a person needs.

“Understanding the genetic markers of daytime naps this could help clinicians develop personalized recommendations on when to sleep ”, warns Iyas Daghlas, fourth-year medical student and researcher at the Saxena Laboratory at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and one of the lead authors of the study.

Some of the genetic traits identified in the study published in the journal Nature communications they were also linked to health problems, such as obesity and high blood pressure, the researchers found. In addition, several of the nap gene variants were associated with orexina, a neuropeptide, linked to arousal.

“This pathway is known to be involved in rare sleep disorders such as narcolepsy, but our results show that small disturbances on the road can explain why some people take more naps than others ”, Explain Daghlas.

For Hassan Saeed Dashti, of the Genetic Medicine Center of the MGH and co-author of the report, the siesta is “A little controversial.” “Some countries where daytime naps have long been a part of the culture, like Spain, are now discouraging this habit. Meanwhile, some American companies are promoting naps as a way to boost productivity, ”he said. With that in mind, “It was important to try to unravel the biological pathways that contribute to why we take a nap,” added the expert.

Scientists analyzed the genetic information of 452,633 participants in the British Biobank. Participants were asked how often they nap during the day and were given three options: never / rarely, sometimes or usually. Some were asked to use an activity monitor, or accelerometers, to make sure they were accurately reporting their naps. “It gave him an extra layer of confidence that what we found is real and not an artifact,” he added. Dashti.

So a genome-wide association study was conducted (GWAS) to identify genetic variations associated with napping. It involved quickly scan entire sets of DNA, or genomes, for a large number of people. Their results were independently replicated by a mainstream genetic testing company called 23andMe, who analyzed the genomes of 541,333 people.

The investigation comes after the British medical journal reveal that a five-minute afternoon nap can improve memory and keep the brain more agile. People who regularly took afternoon naps seemed speak more fluently and remember things better than those who didn’t interrupt the day with some sleep, according to the study.

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