Case Control Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Apr 8, 2017; 9(10): 503-509
Published online Apr 8, 2017. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v9.i10.503
Egg consumption and risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
Zeinab Mokhtari, Hossein Poustchi, Tannaz Eslamparast, Azita Hekmatdoost
Zeinab Mokhtari, Tannaz Eslamparast, Azita Hekmatdoost, Department of Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics, Faculty of Nutrition Sciences and Food Technology, National Nutrition and Food Technology Research Institute, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 1981619573, Iran
Hossein Poustchi, Liver and Pancreatobiliary Diseases Research Group, Digestive Diseases Research Institute, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 14117, Iran
Author contributions: Mokhtari Z, Poustchi H, Eslamparast T and Hekmatdoost A conceptualized and designed the study and wrote the manuscript; Mokhtari Z analyzed data; Eslamparast T and Poustchi H collected data; Hekmatdoost A and Poustchi H interpreted the data, provided professional comments, and critically revised the manuscript for intellectual content and data accuracy.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the ethics committee of National Nutrition and Food Technology Research Institute, Tehran, Iran.
Informed consent statement: All patients signed the informed consent form.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors had any personal or financial conflicts of interest to report.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at a_hekmat2000@yahoo.com.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Azita Hekmatdoost, MD, PhD, RD, Department of Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics, Faculty of Nutrition Sciences and Food Technology, National Nutrition and Food Technology Research Institute, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, West Arghavan St., Farahzadi Blvd., P.O. Box: 19395-4741, Tehran 1981619573, Iran. a_hekmat2000@yahoo.com
Telephone: +98-21-22360658 Fax: +98-21-22360657
Received: August 27, 2016
Peer-review started: August 29, 2016
First decision: September 27, 2016
Revised: January 4, 2017
Accepted: March 14, 2017
Article in press: March 17, 2017
Published online: April 8, 2017
Abstract
AIM

To evaluate the association between egg consumption and risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) development.

METHODS

This case-control study was conducted on individuals who were referred to two hepatology clinics in Tehran, Iran in 2015. The study included 169 patients with NAFLD and 782 controls. Egg consumption was estimated using a validated food frequency questionnaire. The participants were categorized according to the frequency of their egg consumption during the previous year: Less than two eggs per week, two to three eggs per week, and four or more eggs per week.

RESULTS

In the crude model, participants who consumed 2 to 3 eggs per week, were 3.56 times more likely to have NAFLD in comparison to those who consumed less than 2 eggs per week (OR: 3.56; 95%CI: 2.35-5.31). Adjustment for known risk factors of NAFLD strengthened this significant association so that individuals have consumed two to three eggs per week had 3.71 times higher risk of NAFLD than those who have eaten less than two eggs per week (OR: 3.71; 95%CI: 1.91, 7.75).

CONCLUSION

Our data indicate that higher egg consumption in common amount of usage is associated with higher risk of NAFLD.

Keywords: Egg, Diet, Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, Dietary cholesterol

Core tip: The data indicate that egg consumption in common amount of usage is associated with risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. According to the case-control design of this study, it can not show the causality effect; thus, these findings should be confirmed in future prospective studies with separate parts of eggs to find the etiological relationships.