Wealthy people have a far lower risk of suffering a stroke — but only until the age of 65. Researchers in the United States studied the personal circumstances of almost 20,000 people aged 50 and over. They followed them for more than eight years, on average, in which time there were 1,542 strokes.

In the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke, Mauricio Avendano, of Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, and colleagues showed that people aged 50 to 64 in the poorest tenth of the population had a risk of stroke that was three times greater than those in the richest 10 per cent. “Wealth is the strongest predictor of stroke among the factors we looked at,” Dr Avendano said. But after the age of 65 the links between wealth and stroke risk disappear.

Lack of resources, and especially money, appear to influence strongly people’s chances of having a stroke at an early age, Dr Avendano said. “This would mean that diminishing the large wealth gap at age 50-64 also could help to diminish the large disparities in stroke.”

Comparisons showed that common risk factors for stroke, such as high blood pressure, smoking, inactivity, excess weight and diabetes, were more common in poorer people.

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