Egg Consumption and Coronary Artery Disease in Japanese Patients Undergoing Coronary Angiography

Many prospective studies of egg consumption and coronary artery disease (CAD) provided conflicting findings, and ethnicity may influence CAD risk. Two Japanese cohort studies, which were conducted around 1990, reported no significant association between egg consumption and CAD. However, there was no study showing the association between egg consumption and CAD in Japanese patients undergoing coronary angiography (CAG), whose intakes were assessed at the time of CAD diagnosis. The present study is a cross-sectional study to investigate egg intake and CAD in 795 Japanese patients undergoing CAG. Egg intake was classified into 3 categories (<3, 3-4 eggs/wk, and ≥1 egg/d). CAD was found in 506 patients, of whom 299 had multi-vessel disease (MVD). The prevalence of CAD or MVD did not differ markedly among 3 groups of <3, 3-4 eggs/wk, and ≥1 egg/d. Even after adjusting atherosclerotic risk factors and dietary intakes, multivariate analyses showed no significant associations between egg intake and CAD or MVD. Odds ratios (ORs) for 3-4 eggs/wk and ≥1 egg/d compared to <3 eggs/wk was 0.91 (95%CI: 0.62-1.34) and 1.06 (0.67-1.67) for CAD and 0.79 (0.55-1.15) and 1.22 (0.80-1.87) for MVD. However, only among 504 patients without lipid-lowering drugs, patients with 3-4 eggs/wk less often had MVD than those with <3 eggs/wk (p<0.05). In multivariate analyses, ORs for 3-4 eggs/wk and ≥1 egg/d compared to <3 eggs/wk were 0.56 (0.33-0.96) and 1.21 (0.69-2.13) for MVD. Thus, egg consumption was not associated with an increased risk at CAD in Japanese patients undergoing CAG.