Researchers have shown how limited egg consumption can increase the amount of healthy heart metabolite in the blood, publishing their results today on eLife. The findings suggest that eating one egg a day can help reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.Eggs are a rich source of cholesterol in the diet, but they also contain a variety of essential nutrients. There is conflicting evidence that egg consumption is beneficial or harmful to heart health. A 2018 study published in the journal Heart, which covers about half a million adults in China, found that those who ate eggs daily (about one egg a day) had a significantly lower risk of heart disease and stroke than those who ate eggs less frequently. Now, in order to better understand this relationship, the authors of this work conducted a human-based study examining how egg consumption affects cardiovascular health symptoms.
“Few studies have looked at the role that plasma cholesterol metabolism plays in the link between egg use and the risk of heart disease, so we wanted to help address this gap,” explains lead author Lang Pan, MSc in the Department of Disease and Biology. , Peking University, Beijing, China.Pan and the team selected 4,778 participants from China Kadoorie Biobank, 3,401 of whom had 1,377 cardiovascular disease without it. They used a method called targeted nuclear magnetic resonance to measure 225 metabolites from plasma samples taken from participants’ blood. Of these metabolites, 24 were associated with reported levels of egg consumption.
Their analysis showed that people who ate a certain amount of eggs had higher levels of protein in their blood called apolipoprotein A1 – a block of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), also known as ‘good lipoprotein’. These people in particular had high HDL molecules in their bloodstream, which helped to remove cholesterol from the bloodstream and thus protect against blockage that can lead to heart attacks and strokes.The researchers also identified 14 metabolites linked to heart disease. They found that participants who ate fewer eggs had lower levels of beneficial metabolites and higher levels of danger in their blood, compared to those who ate eggs regularly.
“Together, our results provide a possible explanation of how eating a certain amount of eggs can help prevent heart disease,” said author Canqing Yu, Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, at Peking University. “More research is needed to confirm the causal role of lipid metabolites in the link between egg use and risk of heart disease. This study may have implications for China’s dietary guidelines,” adds senior author Liming Li, Distinguished Professor of Hair in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, at Peking University. “Current health guidelines in China recommend eating one egg a day, but the data show that the rate used is lower than this.
Source Journal Reference:Lang Pan, Lu Chen, Jun Lv, Yuanjie Pang, Yu Guo, Pei Pei, Huaidong Du, Ling Yang, Iona Y Millwood, Robin G Walters, Yiping Chen, Weiwei Gong, Junshi Chen, Canqing Yu, Zhengming Chen, Liming Li. Association of egg consumption, metabolic markers, and risk of cardiovascular diseases: A nested case-control study. eLife, 2022; 11 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.72909
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