Research
Hormonal
Genetic variants near the VRK2 gene are associated with shorter sleep duration, with each allele associated with approximately 1.6 to 2.0 minutes less sleep.
Genetic variants near the VRK2 gene are associated with slightly shorter sleep duration (1.6-2.0 minutes less per allele). While this is a statistically significant finding, the effect size is small and likely has minimal practical impact on an individual's total sleep time.
StrongSupportsVERY_HIGH confidence
We identified two, novel, conditionally independent, signals that were located ~900kb apart, one upstream and the other downstream of VRK2. The downstream variant, rs17190618, has an average per allele effect of 2.0 minutes (95% CI [1.3, 2.7], P = 1.2x10^-9) on sleep duration. The upstream variant, rs1380703... has an average per allele effect of 1.6 minutes (95% CI [1.1, 2.2], P = 7.6x10^-9) on sleep duration.
Why this rating
High statistical significance (P < 5x10^-8) and replication in independent cohorts (47,180 individuals).
Source
Genome-Wide Association Analyses in 128,266 Individuals Identifies New Morningness and Sleep Duration Loci
Samuel E. Jones et al. · PLoS Genetics · 2016
DOI 10.1371/journal.pgen.1006125
cohort · n=128266Cited 411×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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