Research Paper Advance Articles
Association between physical activity practice and sleep quality of older people in social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and Health Guidelines and future studies for the post-COVID period: a systematic review
- 1 Laboratory of Sport and Exercise Psychology, Human Movement Sciences Graduate Program, College of Health and Sport Science of the Santa Catarina State University (UDESC), Florianópolis, Brazil
Received: August 8, 2024 Accepted: November 15, 2024 Published: January 15, 2025
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.206180How to Cite
Copyright: © 2025 Andrade et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Purpose: Physical activity (PA) is considered an alternative to mitigate the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the sleep of older adults. The objective was to verify the association between physical activity and the sleep quality of older people in social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, to analyze the Health Guidelines, and suggest future studies for the post-COVID period.
Methods: This systematic review followed PRISMA recommendations, and the protocol was registered in PROSPERO (CRD 42023406471). The search for articles occurred in April 2024 in the databases PubMed, Web of Science, SCOPUS, and gray literature. Data were extracted and checked in a Microsoft Excel® spreadsheet. The quality assessment was performed using tools from the National Institutes of Health.
Results: In total, 1582 studies were found in the databases, of which nine were included in the analyses. Four studies reported a negative association of reduced levels of PA during the pandemic with sleep quality, while one study showed a positive association of PA with sleep quality. Four studies demonstrated no association.
Conclusions: PA was associated with the sleep quality of older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic and reduced levels of PA during this period demonstrated a negative association with sleep quality. Practice of PA is recommended for this post-COVID scenario, as a measure to reduce social isolation and its negative effects and improve the quality of sleep in older adults.
Abbreviations
EPAQ: EPIC-cohort questionnaire; EEPAQ: Elderly Exernet Physical Activity Questionnaire; METS: Metabolic Equivalent; ISI: Insomnia Severity Index; IPAQ: International Physical Activity Questionnaire; PA: Physical activity; PARS-3: Physical Activity Rating Scale; PASE: Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly; PSQI: Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index; PRISMA: Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses; PROSPERO: International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews; WHO: World Health Organization.