Some people, no matter what they do, simply cannot fall asleep until the wee hours…These night owls may have a common form of insomnia called delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD)…Now researchers at the Rockefeller University and their colleagues have uncovered a genetic mutation that may explain why this condition sometimes runs in families…
The woman lived under observation for 18 days in a room with no clocks or windows. Not only did she produce the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin five to seven hours later than a typical person in similar previous studies, but her sleep was also oddly fragmented, sometimes coming in short naps. When the team analyzed her DNA, they found a mutation in a gene called Cry1 that also showed up in her family members who reported sleep problems…
Daniel Kripke, a psychiatrist who has studied sleep and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego…points out that studies that scan large groups of people for links between a particular trait and a genetic variant have found no connection between this mutation and DSPD. Still, he says, the new paper presents convincing evidence that it could be behind some cases of the disorder.
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