The comparison of the lifestyle of vaccinated versus unvaccinated elite athletes during the Covid-19 pandemic: A multi-country comparison

Background: the covid-19 pandemic has resulted in global home confinement and quarantine, leading to the vaccination of societies worldwide. however, some elite athletes have negative views toward vaccination.aim: this study aimed to compare the lifestyle of vaccinated versus unvaccinated international elite athletes during the covid-19 pandemic.materials and methods: from march to october 2021, an online survey was conducted, including socio-individual information of athletes, the international physical activity questionnaire (ipaq), the rapid eating assessment for participants (reap-s), and the petersburg sleep quality questionnaire (psqi). a total of 581 elite athletes from 4 continents (europe, asia, africa, and america) and different countries, aged 18-35 years, were voluntarily recruited. data analysis was performed using u-mann-whitney and wilcoxon signed-rank tests, with the level of significance set at alpha p<0.05.results: the results indicated that there was a significant difference between the level of physical activity and eating behavior of vaccinated versus unvaccinated elite athletes (p<0.001). however, no significant difference was found between the quality of sleep among vaccinated and unvaccinated elite athletes (p=0.270).conclusion: it was shown that, despite the unvaccinated status of some elite athletes (49.9%), their physical activity levels were higher than those of vaccinated elite athletes during the covid-19 pandemic. additionally, the eating behavior of vaccinated elite athletes was better than that of unvaccinated elite athletes during the covid-19 pandemic, but there was no significant difference in the quality of sleep between the groups.