More Wealth Equals Fewer Strokes

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Wealthier people are less likely to have a stroke, but the benefit appears to fade out with age.

That's the key finding from Dutch researchers who looked at overall wealth (defined as the total of all assets, including inherited money, minus any liabilities), income, and educational levels in United States residents between the ages of 50 and 64, and those age 65 and over.

In the younger age group, having greater wealth significantly lowered the odds someone would have a stroke. But after age 65, wealth didn't appear to make much difference. The authors speculate that may be because poorer people tend to die at a younger age, leaving more people who were wealthier to begin with in the older age group.

The link between wealth and stroke risk is also supported by other results of the study, which showed poorer people are more likely to smoke, have high blood pressure, be overweight, have low levels of physical activity, and suffer from diseases like diabetes and heart disease -- all of which put them at increased risk for stroke.

Higher educational levels and incomes were also linked to lower stroke risk, but those results weren't as significant as the finding about wealth, report the authors.

"We confirmed that lower wealth, education and income are associated with increased stroke up to age 65, and wealth is the strongest predictor of stroke among the factors we looked at," study author Mauricio Avendano, Ph.D., from Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, was quoted as saying. "After age 65, the association of education, income and wealth with stroke are very weak, and wealth did not clearly predict stroke."

The research was conducted among nearly 20,000 people who were followed for an average of about eight years. About 1,500 people had strokes during the study period.

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SOURCE: Stroke, published online April 24, 2008