BOSTON—Researchers from Harvard and Brigham and Women's Hospital found, in a cohort of older adults with limited egg intake, there was no association between egg consumption or dietary cholesterol and increased risk of incident type 2 diabetes (Am J Clin Nutr. June 9, 2010). In this prospective study of 3,898 men and women from the Cardiovascular Health Study (1989–2007), egg consumption was assessed by using a picture-sorted food questionnaire and ascertained incident type 2 diabetes annually by using information on hypoglycemic agents and plasma glucose. We used Cox proportional hazards models to estimate adjusted relative risks.
During a mean follow-up of 11.3 years, 313 new cases of type 2 diabetes occurred. Crude incidence rates were 7.39, 6.83, 7.00, 6.72 and 12.20 per 1,000 person-years in people who reported egg consumption of never, less than 1 egg/month, 1-3 eggs/month, 1-4 eggs/week, and almost daily, respectively. In multivariable-adjusted models, there was no association between egg consumption and increased risk of type 2 diabetes in either sex and overall. In a secondary analysis, dietary cholesterol was not associated with incident diabetes (P for trend = 0.47). In addition, egg consumption was not associated with clinically meaningful differences in fasting glucose, fasting insulin or measures of insulin resistance despite small absolute analytic differences that were significant.