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The Genetics of Sleepwalking

Sleepwalking is common in children and less common in adults, but what role do genetics and environmental factors play in the origin of sleepwalking? This large Finnish questionnaire study of 11,220 twins (including 1,045 monozygotic and 1,899 dizygotic twin pairs) examined the prevalence and genetics of sleepwalking in children and adults.

Overall, about 25% reported sleepwalking as children and less than 5% reported sleepwalking as adults. Women reported significantly more sleepwalking than men as children, but men reported more than women as adults. The concordance rate was 0.55 among monozygotic twin pairs and 0.35 among dizygotic twins. The authors calculated that the tendency to sleepwalk is more than 50% genetically based in children and over one third in adults. Only 0.06% of adult sleepwalkers reported that they never sleepwalked as children.

Comment: Only through large-scale studies such as this can we begin to sort out the genetic basis of behaviors often attributed to psychological causes. These data should help reassure both physicians and their patients of the genetic basis of sleepwalking, although environmental precipitants remain uncertain.

— G Tucker

Published in Journal Watch Psychiatry April 1, 1997

Citation(s):

Hublin C et al. Prevalence and genetics of sleepwalking: a population-based twin study. Neurology 1997 48 177-181.

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