Eating eggs ups risk of CAD, especially in genetically susceptible people

Genetic predisposition appears to moderate the association between egg consumption and increased risk of coronary artery disease (CAD), suggests a study.

A total of 34,111 participants without CAD at baseline from the project of Prediction for Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease Risk in China were included in this prospective study, which explored the relationship between egg intake and incident CAD at different genetic susceptibilities.

Food frequency questionnaires were used to evaluate egg consumption. The authors quantified genetic susceptibility using a predefined polygenic risk score (PRS) with 540 genetic variants. They also estimated the hazard ratio (HR) with 95 percent confidence interval (CI) of incident CAD associated with egg intake and PRS using Cox proportional hazards models.

Overall, 1,128 incident CAD cases were recorded over a median follow-up of 11.7 years. Both greater egg consumption and increased PRS were associated with a higher CAD risk.

When stratified by genetic risk, each increase of 3 eggs/week resulted in a 5-percent higher CAD risk for participants with low to intermediate genetic risk (HR, 1.05, 95 percent CI, 1.01‒1.09) and in a 10-percent greater CAD risk for those with high genetic risk (HR, 1.10, 95 percent CI, 1.05‒1.16).

“[A] significant synergistic interaction was also indicated at both multiplicative (p_interaction=0.007) and additive (relative excess risk, 0.73, 95 percent CI, 0.24‒1.22) scales,” the authors said.

Upon examination of the joint effect, participants with high genetic risk and consumption of ≥10 eggs/week had an HR of 2.95 (95 percent CI, 2.41‒3.62) relative to those with low to intermediate genetic risk and consuming <1 egg/week. The corresponding standardized 10-year CAD rates rose from 1.37 percent to 4.24 percent.

“PRS-stratified recommendations on egg consumption may help formulate personalized nutrition policies,” the authors said.