BMJ Sub-Issue: Being Overweight – The Bridge Between Insomnia and Type 2 Diabetes!

How did you spend that long night?

Insomnia is a major public health problem that affects 10%–30% of the global population and can be a concomitant symptom of many medical, neurological and psychiatric disorders. Type 2 diabetes (T2DM) is a chronic disease that today, 5 billion people worldwide have diabetes, and this number is expected to increase by 25% by 2030 and by 51% by 2045.

Evidence from observational studies suggests that patients with insomnia have a higher risk of developing T2DM. Recently, two specific Mendelian randomized (MR) studies supported the adverse effects of insomnia on the risk of T2DM, suggesting that insomnia is a new precipitating cause of T2DM. However, little is known about the mechanism of association between insomnia and T2DM. This study applied the network Mendelian randomization (MR) framework to determine the causal relationship between insomnia and T2DM and to identify potential factors, including body mass index (BMI), waist-to-hip ratio and body fat percentage, and glucose metabolism (HbA1c, fasting blood glucose, and fasting blood insulin).

The researchers selected 1331010 study individuals from UK and EU databases and used mrr frameworks to measure effect estimates for insomnia-T2DM, insomnia-mediating, and mediating-T2DM associations. If MR studies confirm a causal relationship between insomnia and T2DM, then the mediating factor between insomnia and T2DM is established.

The results showed that in the inverse variance weighting method, insomnia increased the risk of T2DM, and there was no heterogeneity and no level pleiotropy, which strongly suggested a causal relationship between insomnia predicted from a genetic point of view and T2DM. In addition, MR analysis provided strong evidence of a causal relationship between insomnia and BMI and body fat percentage. There is also some evidence of an association between insomnia and the waist-to-hip ratio. At the same time, the results show that insomnia has no causal relationship with glucose metabolism. Higher BMI, lumbar-to-hip ratio, and body fat percentage levels are strongly associated with increased risk of T2DM.

Causal relationship between genetically determined insomnia and T2DM

Overweight and glucose metabolism summarized by insomnia to type 2 diabetes

Taken together, the findings suggest a causal relationship between genetically predicted insomnia type 2 diabetes. Being overweight (especially BMI and body fat rate) is the causal pathway from insomnia to type 2 diabetes.

bibliography:

Xiuyun W, Jiating L, Minjun X, et al Network Mendelian randomization study: exploring the causal pathway from insomnia to type 2 diabetes BMJ Open Diabetes Research and Care 2022;10:e002510. doi: 10.1136/bmjdrc-2021-002510

Written by | liangying

Edit | Swagpp