CHICAGO (Reuters) – Barriers to health care, bad habits and poor diet put US adults at far greater risk of stroke than Europeans, researchers in the Netherlands said last week.

US women are twice as likely to have a stroke as European women, and American men have a 61 percent higher chance compared with European men.

"What we find is, especially in the very poor, Americans have a much higher prevalence of stroke than Europeans," said Mauricio Avendano of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, who presented his findings at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference in New Orleans. He said Americans have more preventable risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.

"Obesity is definitely contributing to these differences, especially when you look at central European countries such as Germany, the Netherlands or Austria. Their prevalence of obesity is much less," he said.

The findings are based on data from large surveys of US and European health and retirement data, which included interviews among people 50 and older. The researchers studied data on more than 13,000 people in the United States and more than 30,000 Europeans.