Assessing potential shared genetic aetiology between body mass index and sleep duration in 142,209 individuals

Observational studies find an association between increased body mass index (BMI) and short self-reported sleep duration in adults. However, the underlying biological mechanisms that underpin these associations are unclear. Recent findings from the UK Biobank suggest a weak genetic correlation between BMI and self-reported sleep duration. However, the potential shared genetic aetiology between these traits has not been examined using a comprehensive approach. To investigate this, we created a polygenic risk score (PRS) of BMI and examined its association with self-reported sleep duration in a combination of individual participant data and summary-level data, with a total sample size of 142,209 individuals. Although we observed a nonsignificant genetic correlation between BMI and sleep duration, using LD score regression (r(g) = -0.067 [ SE = 0.039], P = 0.092) we found that a PRS of BMI is associated with a decrease in sleep duration (unstandardized coefficient = -1.75 min [ SE = 0.67], P = 6.13 x 10-7), but explained only 0.02% of the variance in sleep duration. Our findings suggest that BMI and self-reported sleep duration possess a small amount of shared genetic aetiology and other mechanisms must underpin these associations.