Egg consumption and coronary atherosclerotic burden.

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 23-89 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.