An Egg a Day May Keep Type-2 Diabetes Away, Says Study

Akshay Naik 07 January 2019

Life

Eggs remain one of the most contentious of foods. Traditionally, high intakes are not advised primarily because of the high content of cholesterol in eggs. However, eggs are also a bountiful resource of many bioactive ingredients that are known to have positive effects on human health. Hence, it becomes difficult to discount the health benefits of eating eggs just because of their cholesterol content.

New research has found that the daily intake of one egg is linked to a blood metabolites pattern that entails lower risk of type-2 diabetes. The study, conducted in the University of Eastern Finland, has been published in the journal Molecular Nutrition and Food Research. Previously, the investigators had shown that eating one egg per day was associated with a lower risk of developing type-2 diabetes among middle-aged men participating in the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study in eastern Finland.

“The purpose of the current study was to explore potential compounds that could explain this association using non-targeted metabolomics, a technique that enables a broad profiling of chemicals in a sample,” says Stefania Noerman, early-stage researcher and lead author of the study.

The researchers found that blood samples, taken from men who had eaten more eggs, contained a number of lipid molecules that positively correlated to the blood profile of men who are not predisposed to type-2 diabetes. Furthermore, they were also able to pinpoint various biochemical compounds in the blood that predicted a higher risk of developing type-2 diabetes, including the amino acid tyrosine.

It should be noted that the study does not provide conclusive proof of its claims, but does suggest some plausible mechanisms which could, at least partly, explain the inverse association between egg intake and the previously observed lower risk of developing type-2 diabetes. “Although it is too early to draw any causal conclusions, we now have some hints about certain egg-related compounds that may have a role in type-2 diabetes development. Further detailed investigations with both, cell models and intervention studies in humans that use modern techniques, such as metabolomics, are needed to understand the mechanism behind physiological effects of egg intake,” says Ms Noerman.

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