Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome, also known as SADS, has been studied for years. The syndrome is caused by an undetected genetic heart condition and often occurs in young adulthood.
But ever since the COVID-19 vaccines were released in late 2020, people have continually suggested that the shots are making SADS more common.
Articles and social media posts have highlighted instances of young athletes collapsing during games, with claims that the rate of these occurrences are way up since the vaccines came to market.
Take this Instagram post: "SADS — according to International Olympic Committee data, an average of 29 athletes under the age of 35 suffer sudden death per year from 1966-2004. From March 2021 to March 2022, 769 athletes have died or suffered cardiac arrest."
The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
There are a number of issues here. First: the data itself. While the study that the post described as "International Olympic Committee data" only reflects sudden deaths, the 769 figure it is being compared with incorporates deaths and cardiac arrest episodes that did not result in death. PolitiFact's review of some of the reports that were counted in that figure also found the number included reports of cases that didn't involve any emergency medical episodes at all.
Second, the study that the Instagram post said looked at sudden cardiac deaths in athletes from 1966 to 2004 wasn't, as it suggested, conducted by the International Olympic Committee. Rather, the findings were presented at a Dec. 7, 2004, committee meeting by researchers affiliated with the University Hospital Center in Lausanne, Switzerland.
We were unable to get in touch with researchers involved in that study for more details or updated figures, and the International Olympic Committee told us that it doesn't track this kind of data.
The 769 figure, meanwhile, comes from an April 2022 segment on One America News Network, a conservative cable news service that in the past has shared problematic claims related to COVID-19.
In the clip, reporter Pearson Sharp talked about how tennis players Jannik Sinner and Paula Badosa had to drop out of the Miami Open in 2021. Sharp then said the women were just two of "more than 769 athletes who have collapsed during a game on the field over the last year from March of 2021 to March of this year." However, Sinner and Badosa did not collapse during any match. Tennis officials confirmed that Sinner was suffering from foot blisters and Badosa had a viral illness at the time.
We reached out to Sharp about the data he used to get the figure. He told us the deaths and injuries were taken directly from headlines collected over the past year from around the world and sent several examples.
But PolitiFact — and others — have repeatedly investigated the incidents cited in these claims. The details of these episodes show that vaccines are neither causing athletes to collapse, nor are they connected to other sudden death episodes.
A review of the articles Sharp sent over also showed that the reports aren't consistent. Some cite medical professionals who ruled out vaccination as a cause. Others don't include any information on the athlete's vaccination status. And some were about athletes that neither collapsed nor experienced a cardiac event.
One of the examples is Gilbert Kwemoi, a Gold medalist middle-distance runner from Kenya who collapsed in his home and died in August 2021. None of the reports about his death that we reviewed indicate whether he was vaccinated against COVID-19 or if it was a cardiac event that caused his death. His brother told news outlets that Kwemoi had developed an "illness" at a training camp.
Another is French soccer player Franck Berrier, who died of a heart attack in August 2021 while playing tennis. But Berrier, before the vaccines were on the market, had acknowledged that he had a heart condition.