BBC Radio Four's More or Less - the Stroke Association responds

Professor Tony Rudd said: “It is clear from the data that the Stroke Association has provided that more young men and women are being admitted with stroke now than used to occur. There is certainly a concern that, with increasing rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes (both powerful risk factors for stroke), that this number will continue to rise in the future.

“Stroke can affect people of all ages but too many people think it is just a disease of older people. We do have to raise awareness that stroke is preventable, and the Stroke Association has performed a very valuable role in highlighting stroke in younger people.”

Dr Dale Webb, Director of Research and Information at the Stroke Association, said: “Stroke is one of greatest health challenges of our time. In order to highlight the impact of stroke in people of working age, we reviewed the information available on the number of people admitted to hospital for a stroke. Hospital admissions are not the same as stroke incidence rates. Stroke incidence rates refer to the number of new cases of stroke per population; data for this are not consistently available year on year. Our analysis showed that, in 2000, there were just over 21,000 hospital admissions for stroke among people aged between 20 and 64, compared to 27,000 hospital admissions among the same age group in 2014.

“There are some indications that the incidence rate for stroke has gone down in recent years – but this does not necessarily mean that there are fewer strokes, as our population size increases. The number of hospital admissions for stroke has increased over the last 15 years. In presenting our figures, we took into account factors such as the growing population, more people living longer, and increasingly unhealthy lifestyles.

“We also worked with the media to highlight additional factors which could have led to the increase in hospital admissions; such as access to better stroke treatment and increased awareness of stroke symptoms. The corresponding article on BBC News makes clear in its opening line that we referred to hospital admissions data.

"We were contacted by BBC Radio 4’s More or Less programme and explained that we did not use hospital admissions data to mean stroke incidence rates, as suggested. This was not highlighted in their programme. We also got in touch with the programme to put forward a spokesperson from the charity to explain how we used our data, but this offer was not taken up.

“Presenting an accurate picture of the number of people affected by stroke in the UK is a significant challengewith the data available, because not everyone who has a stroke goes to hospital. We have commented on the changes in the data around hospital admissions and we welcome any debate on how these increases can be explained. However, behind all the recent headlines, we know that stroke is devastating and its impact on people’s lives cannot be ignored.”