{"id":34193,"date":"2013-01-15T15:22:55","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T20:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=news&#038;p=34193"},"modified":"2013-01-15T15:22:55","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T20:22:55","slug":"large-meta-analysis-finds-no-harm-associated-with-eggs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2013\/01\/15\/large-meta-analysis-finds-no-harm-associated-with-eggs\/","title":{"rendered":"Large Meta-Analysis Finds No Harm Associated with Eggs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No food has had more ups and downs over the last century or so than the common egg. Following a long period in which eggs were ubiquitous and highly regarded, eggs fell from favor with the rise of concerns over cholesterol. Currently, the\u00a0American Heart Association\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.heart.org\/HEARTORG\/Conditions\/Cholesterol\/PreventionTreatmentofHighCholesterol\/Common-Misconceptions-about-Cholesterol_UCM_305638_Article.jsp\">recommends<\/a>\u00a0that people restrict dietary cholesterol to 300 mg per day, which effectively limits people to 1 egg per day at most. However, the relationship of dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol \u00a0is, at best, tenuous, and a significant number of experts now believe that egg consumption poses no risk to cardiovascular health.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2013\/01\/fried-egg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-34194\" title=\"fried egg\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2013\/01\/fried-egg-300x259.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"259\" \/><\/a>In\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/346\/bmj.e8539\">a new paper published in\u00a0<em>BMJ<\/em><\/a>, a group of researchers from\u00a0China\u00a0and\u00a0Boston\u00a0performed a meta-analysis of 8 studies that included 263,938 participants for coronary heart disease (CHD) and 210,404 participants for stroke and followed them for 8 to 22 years. The authors found no evidence for an association between egg consumption and either CHD or stroke:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Relative risk of CHD for adding 1 egg per day: 0.99 (CI\u00a00.85- 0 1.15, p=0.88)<\/li>\n<li>Relative risk of stroke for adding 1 egg per day: 0.91 (CI 0.81 &#8211; 1.02, p=0.10)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>However, an increased risk for CHD was observed in the subgroup of patients with diabetes in the group of participants with the highest egg consumption compared with those with the lowest consumption (relative risk 1.54, CI 1.14 &#8211; 2.09, p=0.01). No similar increase in the risk of stroke was observed in this group, though a protective effect against hemorrhagic stroke was observed in those with the highest egg consumption (relative risk\u00a00.75, CI 0.57 &#8211; 0.99, p=0.04). The authors cautioned that the findings in the diabetes subgroup required confirmation in additional studies.<\/p>\n<p>The authors concluded that the findings of their meta-analysis &#8220;do not support a positive association between egg consumption and cardiovascular disease outcomes in the general population.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Related content on CardioExchange:<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/voices\/selections-from-richard-lehmans-literature-review-january-14th\/\">Read Richard Lehman&#8217;s amusing perspective on eggs and this study.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No food has had more ups and downs over the last century or so than the common egg. Following a long period in which eggs were ubiquitous and highly regarded, eggs fell from favor with the rise of concerns over cholesterol. Currently, the\u00a0American Heart Association\u00a0recommends\u00a0that people restrict dietary cholesterol to 300 mg per day, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[476,1306,210,1633,1632],"class_list":["post-34193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prevention","tag-aha","tag-american-heart-association","tag-cholesterol","tag-dietary-recommendations","tag-eggs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}