ArticleBMC medicine2023
Identifying the potential causal role of insomnia symptoms on 11,409 health-related outcomes: a phenome-wide Mendelian randomisation analysis in UK Biobank.
Article in BMC medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Lights On or Off? The Efficacy of Light Therapy as Add-On to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia-A Pilot Study.Journal of sleep research · 2026Trial
- Exposome factors predict the association between sleep health and depression.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Sleep as a psychiatric vital sign, not just a symptom.Dusunen adam : Bakirkoy Ruh ve Sinir Hastaliklari Hastanesi yayin organi · 2026Article
- Poor sleep is robustly correlated with accelerated aging but the evidence for causation is mixed.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Sleep and circadian health in the UK Biobank: report on the 2023 sleep questionnaire enhancement.Sleep · 2026Article
- The effects of exergaming on sleep quality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.Frontiers in digital health · 2026Review
- The Interplay Between Sleep and Mental Health: A Genetic Perspective.Biological psychiatry · 2025Review
- Exploring potentially morally injurious events and mental health in a UK representative population.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Article
- Longitudinal big biological data in the AI era.Molecular systems biology · 2025Review
- A phenome-wide association study of genetically determined nicotine metabolism reveals novel links with health-related outcomes.European journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Sleep characteristics and intervertebral disc degeneration risk: an observational and Mendelian randomization study.European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society · 2025Observational
- Sleep deprivation impacts the immunological milieu of epididymis leading to low sperm quality in rats.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Therapeutic Target Discovery for Multiple Myeloma: Identifying Druggable Genes via Mendelian Randomization.Biomedicines · 2025Article
- White blood cell traits and lung cancer risk: a two-sample mendelian randomization analysis.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Associations of physical activity and sedentary behavior with insomnia in middle-aged and older adults: a cross-sectional study.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Sleep disturbance and multimorbidity: a cross-sectional and longitudinal study in the knee pain and related health in the community cohort.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2025Article
- Causal relationship between cancer and immune cell traits: A two-sample mendelian randomization study.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Chronic Low Back Pain Causal Risk Factors Identified by Mendelian Randomization: a Cross-Sectional Cohort Analysis.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Causality between Sarcopenia and Depression: A Bidirectional Mendelian Randomization Study.Actas espanolas de psiquiatria · 2024Article
- Analysis of novel sleep variable highlights shared genetics of sleep and psychiatric disorders.Sleep · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundInsomnia symptoms are widespread in the population and might have effects on many chronic conditions and their risk factors but previous research has focused on select hypothesised associations/effects rather than taking a systematic hypothesis-free approach across many health outcomes.
methodsWe performed a Mendelian randomisation (MR) phenome-wide association study (PheWAS) in 336,975 unrelated white-British UK Biobank participants. Self-reported insomnia symptoms were instrumented by a genetic risk score (GRS) created from 129 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A total of 11,409 outcomes from UK Biobank were extracted and processed by an automated pipeline (PHESANT) for the MR-PheWAS. Potential causal effects (those passing a Bonferroni-corrected significance threshold) were followed up with two-sample MR in MR-Base, where possible.
resultsFour hundred thirty-seven potential causal effects of insomnia symptoms were observed for a diverse range of outcomes, including anxiety, depression, pain, body composition, respiratory, musculoskeletal and cardiovascular traits. We were able to undertake two-sample MR for 71 of these 437 and found evidence of causal effects (with directionally concordant effect estimates across main and sensitivity analyses) for 30 of these. These included novel findings (by which we mean not extensively explored in conventional observational studies and not previously explored using MR based on a systematic search) of an adverse effect on risk of spondylosis (OR [95%CI] = 1.55 [1.33, 1.81]) and bronchitis (OR [95%CI] = 1.12 [1.03, 1.22]), among others.
conclusionsInsomnia symptoms potentially cause a wide range of adverse health-related outcomes and behaviours. This has implications for developing interventions to prevent and treat a number of diseases in order to reduce multimorbidity and associated polypharmacy.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.