Last updated May 23, 2018 at 11:55 am
Daily consumption may reduce cardiovascular disease.
Eating an egg a day could help keep our hearts a lot healthier, according to a team of researchers from China and the UK.
Their study of more than 400,000 people found that daily egg consumers had a 26 per cent lower risk of haemorrhagic stroke, a 28 per cent lower risk of haemorrhagic stroke death and an 18 per cent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease (CVD).
In addition, there was a 12 per cent reduction in risk of ischaemic heart disease for people consuming eggs daily (estimated amount 5.32/week) compared with those who never eat eggs or only rarely (2.03/week).
CVD is the leading cause of death and disability worldwide, due mostly to ischaemic heart disease and stroke (including both haemorrhagic and ischaemic stroke).
Eggs contain high-quality protein, many vitamins and bioactive components such as phospholipids and carotenoids but, according to the researchers, previous studies have found insignificant associations between egg consumption and coronary heart disease or stroke.
Data on 512,891 adults
In their recent project, led by Professor Liming Li and Dr Canqing Yu from the School of Public Health, Peking University Health Science Center, they used data from the China Kadoorie Biobank study, an ongoing prospective study of 512,891 adults aged 30 to 79 from 10 different geographical areas in China.
They focused on 416,213 participants who were free of prior cancer, CVD and diabetes. From that group, at a median follow-up of 8.9 years, 83,977 cases of CVD, 9985 CVD deaths and 5103 major coronary events were documented.
This was an observational study, so no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect, but the authors said their study had a large sample size and took into account established and potential risk factors for CVD.
“The present study finds that there is an association between moderate level of egg consumption (up to 1 egg/day) and a lower cardiac event rate,” they said. “Our findings contribute scientific evidence to the dietary guidelines with regard to egg consumption for the healthy Chinese adult.”
The paper published in Heart.
