Association between depression and sleep apnoea: a Mendelian randomisation study

Background Studies have reported a close relationship between depression and sleep apnoea, yet it is unknown whether these are causally related. Thus, we aimed to determine whether depression is associated with the aetiology of sleep apnoea.

Methods We used publicly available genetic summary data from two large consortia, the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, with data from 36 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) closely associated with major depressive disorder (MDD) and UK Biobank, including 456 736 patients with sleep apnoea and 766 964 controls. For Mendelian randomisation (MR) analysis, we used the inverse-variance weighted method, weighted median method, MR-Egger regression, MR pleiotropy residual sum, and outlier test to retrieve summary data. Analyses were performed using the “TwoSampleMR” package in R.

Results Of the 36 SNPs associated with MDD, we found statistically significant evidence of a potential causal effect of MDD on the risk of sleep apnoea (odds ratio 1.004, 95% confidence interval: 1.001–1.006, p=0.001). Similar results were obtained using the MR-Egger and weighted median methods. Additionally, we found no heterogeneity or pleiotropy.

Conclusions Our findings suggest that depression slightly increases the risk of sleep apnoea. Further investigation of the potential biological mechanisms is necessary.