New evidence linking eggs, cholesterol to cardiovascular death

Oh well, your doctor needs to reconcile these two opposite conclusions. 

Association of egg intake with blood lipids, cardiovascular disease, and mortality in 177,000 people in 50 countries April 2020

With this line: According to the findings, no significant links exist between egg consumption and blood lipids, mortality, or major CVD events in this analysis of 3 large international prospective investigations involving approximately 177,000 people, 12,701 deaths, and 13,658 CVD events from 50 countries in 6 continents.

The latest here:

New evidence linking eggs, cholesterol to cardiovascular death

A person's intake of whole eggs and cholesterol was positively associated with their risk of death, while intake of egg whites or egg substitutes was negatively associated with death in a new study published this week in PLOS Medicine by Yu Zhang of Zhejiang University College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science, Jingjing Jiao of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, China, and colleagues.

Whether consumption of egg and cholesterol is detrimental to cardiovascular health and longevity is highly debated, and data from large-scale cohort studies are scarce. In the new study, researchers used data on 521,120 participants from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study. Participants were aged 50-71 years old, 41.2% women, 91.8% non-Hispanic white, and were recruited from 6 states and 2 cities in the US between 1995 and 1996.

During a mean follow-up of 16 years, 129,328 deaths occurred in the cohort. Whole egg consumption, as reported in a food questionnaire, was significantly associated with higher all-cause mortality after adjusting for demographic characteristics and dietary factors (P<0.001), but not after further adjusting for cholesterol intake (P=0.64). Every intake of an additional 300 mg dietary cholesterol intake per day was associated with a 19% higher all-cause mortality (95% CI 1.16-1.22) and each additional half a whole egg per day was associated with a 7% higher all-cause mortality (95% CI 1.06-1.08). In contrast, egg whites/substitutes consumption was significantly associated with lower all-cause mortality (P<0.001). Replacing half a whole egg with an equivalent amount of egg whites/substitutes was associated with a reduction of 3% in cardiovascular disease mortality.

"Our findings suggest limiting cholesterol intake and replacing whole eggs with egg whites/substitutes or other alternative protein sources for facilitating cardiovascular health and long-term survival," the authors say.

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Research Article

Peer-reviewed; Observational study; Humans

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper:
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003508

Funding: Y.Z. is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC1600500). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Citation: Zhuang P, Wu F, Mao L, Zhu F, Zhang Y, Chen X, et al. (2021) Egg and cholesterol consumption and mortality from cardiovascular and different causes in the United States: A population-based cohort study. PLoS Med 18(2): e1003508.
https:/doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003508