The prescription for economic downturns or sickly investment portfolios might be health-care mutual funds, say analysts and published reports.

Such funds invest in a range of companies, everything from pharmaceutical and medical-device makers to HMOs, hospitals and nursing homes. A few concentrate on just one industry segment, such as service providers or biotechnology firms.

“Historically defensive and noncyclical, the health-care sector is gaining added growth from an aging America,” wrote Robert Goldsborough, the lead analyst for health-care sector funds at Morningstar, in a sector overview on July 25. “Demand is relatively stable because people require treatment regardless of the economy, and the need among approximately 78 million baby boomers in the United States for greater treatment makes for a compelling secular growth story.

“An aging population bodes well for the industry’s future prospects,” he added, “because the majority of peoples’ lifetime medical costs are spent in their final few years.”

Morningstar listed nearly three pages of health-care mutual funds. Many of them boasted a high rate of return, ranging from the high-teens percentage range to the high 20s over a five-year period.

In an e-mail, Goldsborough observed that the health-care industry’s recent strong market performance is unusual, since U.S. equity market returns from 1900 to 2000 were in the 6 percent to 7 percent range.

“However, it’s important to note that the health-care sector underperformed the broader U.S. equity market during 2009 and 2010,” he said. It has outperformed the S&P index each year since 2011.

There is approximately $130 billion invested in health-care mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, Morningstar says.

Eddie Yoon, a portfolio manager and research analyst for Fidelity Investments in Boston who currently manages several health-care sector portfolios and sub-portfolios, wrote earlier this year in a 2014 outlook on health care, “I believe that the health-care sector has the potential to continue to deliver stable, consistent performance in the months to come.”

He makes several observations about the space:

• The innovation pipeline for the health-care sector is full, especially in biotechnology, medical devices and the life sciences industries.

• Throughout numerous business cycles and periods of extreme market volatility, the sector’s “safe haven status often buoys its stocks through downturns or pullbacks” better than sectors that are more cyclical or discretionary. “Even through recessionary periods, most people will not forgo important health procedures or treatments. In the most recent past, the health care sector has also been able to outperform in up markets.”

Yoon sees two other advantages: One is the aging population. By 2030, “one in five Americans will be over age 65, compared to one in eight today.” The other advantage is the Affordable Care Act. The aging baby boomers will spend more on health care, and Obamacare will give “millions more” access to it.

“The biggest development in the health-care sector of late,” Goldsborough noted in his July 25 overview on the Affordable Care Act, “has been the opening of state-based health-care exchanges that allow individuals and small businesses to purchase standardized health insurance policies, receive government subsidies to offset premiums and cost sharing, and determine Medicaid eligibility.

“While U.S. health-care reform introduced new costs for several industries, Morningstar’s equity analysts believe that several health-care subsectors are poised to benefit from the exchanges.”

Yoon said his concerns about the sector were the “unknowns and challenges,” not the least of which “is investor uncertainty about cuts in government spending on health care.”

“For the most part,” he said, “I am staying away from investment in managed care organizations, hospitals and providers and from policy-centric investments in general.”

Goldsborough said Morningstar analysts see “two headwinds and one tailwind” in health care. The headwinds are the problems in Europe and the uncertain impact of sequestration. Even Medicare -- “once a sacred cow” -- may be at risk.

The “tailwind,” he explained, is the rebounding pharmaceutical industry.

“The valuations on Big Pharma stocks were very low in 2010 due to high concerns on the U.S. health-care reform and a wave of major patent losses,” he said in an e-mail. “However, the drug companies have adapted to both headwinds better than expected.”