Night-eating syndrome³ may appear when the genes that synchronise⁴ eating patterns with sleep are faulty, research on mice concluded.

 

This alters meal times, leading to over-eating and weight gain.

 

About 1-2% of people have the condition. Signs include waking in the night and being unable to go back to sleep without eating.

 

The syndrome has recently been classified as an eating disorder⁵, but the cause is unknown.

 

The food consumed is often unhealthy and high in calories, leading to weight gain and sometimes obesity⁶.

 

The study, published in Cell Reports, looked at mice bred with a human version of a body-clock gene¹ in place of the mouse one.

 

When the gene was silenced, the mice ate much earlier than normal ones, when they should have been asleep.

 

Mutations in a related body-clock gene - implicated⁷ in sleep disorders⁸ - led to the mice sleeping more.

 

The researchers think the genes work together to keep eating and sleeping synchronised.

 

A fault in either gene causes disruption in sleeping and eating patterns.

 

"For a long time, people discounted night-eating syndrome as not real," said lead researcher Satchidananda Panda, of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, US.

 

"It opens up a whole lot of future questions about how these cycles are regulated."

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