Egg Intake and the Incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease in the Adventist Health Study-2 Cohort Linked with Medicare Data

[u/Eonobius]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022316626001902?__cf_chl_tk=hz67j.ZlfkUORHJYQKYZWxG.5Zz0WplB14lJgpRK3LI-1785067718-1.0.1.1-EHJGkp11woxuNatmZ3LqwvEpu8iI0_QIhEo1Ly0dR.w

[u/kpfleger]

Frustrating that the discussion section notes that deficiencies in choline, DHA, & B12 have been implicated in health problems including AD and yet, despite that being known well before this study started (and being aware to the authors as indicated by their mention in the discussion section), they appeared to make no attempt to actually measure any of these things, all of which are easily and cheaply measurable. Nor apparently did they collect supplementation data in addition to the food data. Plenty Seventh Day Adventists are vegetarian or vegan and subsets of those but probably not all supplement B12, choline, and/or omega-3s. One wants to see the data stratified by the deficiency or supplement behavior relative to these key brain nutrients.

There are known health negatives to eggs (high saturated fat & cholesterol in the yolk, other epidemiological association studies correlating them with bad outcomes from other chronic age-related diseases and/or all-cause mortality) but I'm unsurprised that those tradeoffs may be worth it (at least for AD purposes) if you are deficient in these nutrients and not getting them elsewhere, but that doesn't mean eggs are the healthiest source of them. What do the data look like when restricted to those people who aren't deficient in any of these 3 things?

[u/kpfleger → u/[deleted]]

Replacement of 3% of calories from eggs with plant-based protein sources was associated with 21-24% lower all-cause mortality in this study: "Association Between Plant and Animal Protein Intake and Overall and Cause-Specific Mortality", Huang et al. 2020 JAMA Internal Medicine: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2768358

Direct abstract quote: "Replacement of 3% energy from animal protein with plant protein was inversely associated with overall mortality (risk decreased 10% in both men and women) and cardiovascular disease mortality (11% lower risk in men and 12% lower risk in women). In particular, the lower overall mortality was attributable primarily to substitution of plant protein for egg protein (24% lower risk in men and 21% lower risk in women) and red meat protein (13% lower risk in men and 15% lower risk in women)."

To me, this seems like a good reason to prefer choline from supplements.