Associations of egg consumption with incident cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality.

Abstract

Eggs are nutrient-dense while also loaded with abundant cholesterol, thus making the public hesitant about their consumption. We conducted the study to investigate if egg consumption is associated with incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality. Using the project of Prediction for Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease Risk in China, we included 102,136 adults free of CVD and assessed their egg consumption with food-frequency questionnaires. CVD endpoints and all-cause mortality were confirmed during follow-ups by interviewing participants or their proxies and checking hospital records/death certificates. The HRs (95% CIs) were calculated using the cohort-stratified Cox regression models. During 777,163 person-years of follow-up, we identified 4,848 incident CVD and 5,511 deaths. U-shaped associations of egg consumption with incident CVD and all-cause mortality were observed. Compared with consumption of 3-<6/week, the multivariable-adjusted HRs (95% CIs) of <1/week and ≥10/week for incident CVD were 1.22 (1.11 to 1.35) and 1.39 (1.28 to 1.52), respectively. The corresponding HRs (95% CIs) for all-cause mortality were 1.29 (1.18 to 1.41) and 1.13 (1.04 to 1.24). Our findings identified that both low and high consumption were associated with increased risk of incident CVD and all-cause mortality, highlighting that moderate egg consumption of 3-<6/week should be recommended for CVD prevention in China.