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The researchers revealed insomnia sufferers can be grouped into the following five sub-types:
Highly distressed personality types, for example neuroticism and depression.
The researchers believe this may explain why there is no ‘one size fits all’ insomnia treatment.
And they hope their findings will lead to more personalised therapies that could completely cure people of the debilitating condition.
The research was carried out by the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and led by PhD student Tessa Blanken.
‘While we have always considered insomnia to be one disorder, it actually represents five different disorders,’ Ms Blanken said. ‘Underlying brain mechanisms may be very different.’
Insomnia affects one in ten people, the authors wrote in The Lancet Psychiatry. Despite its prevalence, insomnia remains somewhat of an enigma.
While certain treatments work for some sufferers, many are only effective initially, while other patients get no relief at all. Varying blood biomarkers in insomnia sufferers have previously suggested there may be subtypes of the condition.
To investigate this further, the researchers analysed 4,322 participants of the Netherlands Sleep Registry, who completed questionnaires about their sleep habits and health history.
Of which, 2,224 were found to have insomnia, while the remaining 2,098 acted as controls.
All the participants had their brain activities monitored via an electroencephalogram to determine any differences between patients.
They were also interviewed for how well they have responded to the commonly-prescribed sleeping pills benzodiazepines and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
Benzodiazepines increase the effect of a chemical called GABA, which reduces brain activity and causes sedation.