Egg consumption and coronary atherosclerotic burden

Highlights
We assessed the relationship between egg consumption and coronary atherosclerotic burden. We found that in patients undergoing coronary angiography the consumption of more than one egg a week was associated with lower coronary atherosclerotic burden. This findings suggest that moderate consumption of eggs may not have a substantial overall impact in the risk of coronary artery disease.

Objective
To verify the association between egg consumption and coronary atherosclerotic burden.
 
Design
Observational study.
 
Setting
Cardiac catheterization laboratory.
 
Participants
Adult patients referred for coronary angiography.
 
Measurements
Socio-demographic data (age, education level, and occupation), cardiovascular risk factors (smoking, systemic hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes, and family history of coronary artery disease), and egg-eating habits were assessed using a research questionnaire. Egg consumption was divided into three categories: less than one egg a week; one egg a week; and more than one egg a week. Coronary atherosclerotic burden was assessed by a blinded interventional cardiologist using the Friesinger Score (FS) obtained from the coronary angiography. This score varies from 0 to 15 and evaluated each of the three main coronary arteries separately. For this analysis, the FS was divided into three categories: 0-4, 5-9, and 10-15.
 
Results
The study sample was composed of 382 adult patients; 241 patients (63.3%) were male. The average age was 60.3±10.8 years (range 23 to 89 years). The egg-eating category was inversely associated with dyslipidemia (p<0.05) but not with the other cardiovascular risk factors. A significant association was found between egg consumption and FS (p<0.05), showing that patients who ate more than one egg a week had a lower coronary atherosclerotic burden. By multivariate analysis, the atherosclerotic burden was independently associated with sex, age, hypertension and egg consumption.
 
Conclusion
In this observational study of patients undergoing coronary angiography, the consumption of more than one egg per week was associated with a lower coronary atherosclerotic burden.
 

References

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021915013003134 Chagas P, Caramori P, Galdino TP et al (2013) Atherosclerosis 229: 381-4