Scientists discovered girls who go to mattress and get up late - these with an “evening chronotype” - usually tend to have unhealthy life, placing them vulnerable to growing kind 2 diabetes.

Tianyi Huang, an affiliate epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospitals' Channing Division of Network Medicine within the US, defined: "Chronotype, or circadian preference, refers to a person's preferred timing of sleep and waking and is partly genetically determined so it may be difficult to change.

"People who assume they're 'night time owls' could have to pay extra consideration to their life-style as a result of their night chronotype could add elevated threat for kind 2 diabetes."

The researchers analysed data from nearly 64,000 women from the Nurses’ Health Study II - one of the largest investigations into the risk factors for major chronic diseases in women in the US - collected from 2009 to 2017.

The data included self-reported sleeping habits, diet, weight, body mass index, sleep timing, smoking behaviour, alcohol use, physical activity and family history of diabetes.

The team also looked at medical records to see if the women had diabetes.

Of those taking part in the study, 11 percent reported having a definite evening chronotype and about 35 percent reported a definite morning chronotype.

The rest were labelled as intermediate, meaning they identified as neither a morning nor evening person.

After accounting for lifestyle factors, evening chronotype was associated with a 19 percent increased risk of diabetes.

Among those with the healthiest lifestyles, only six percent had evening chronotypes, compared with 25 percent of night owls who reported having unhealthy lifestyles.

Evening people were also found to be more likely to drink alcohol in higher quantities, have a low-quality food diet, get fewer hours of sleep per night, currently smoke, and have weight, BMI and physical activity rates in the unhealthy range.

Dr Sina Kianersi, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Channing Division of Network Medicine, said: "When we managed for unhealthy life-style behaviours, the robust affiliation between chronotype and diabetes threat was diminished however nonetheless remained, which signifies that life-style elements clarify a notable proportion of this affiliation."

The association between evening chronotype and diabetes risk was stronger in nurses who worked day shifts as opposed to night shift workers, "suggesting that extra personalised work scheduling might be useful", according to the researchers.

The researchers are now planning to investigate the genetic causes of chronotype and its association with heart disease.

Dr Kianersi said: "If we're capable of decide a causal hyperlink between chronotype and diabetes or different illnesses, physicians might higher tailor prevention methods for his or her sufferers."

The findings had been revealed within the journal the Annals of Internal Medicine.