Health

StudyFinds -   Eggs have spent decades bouncing between dietary hero and villain, praised for their protein one year and vilified for their cholesterol the next. A new study may tip the scales again. Researchers who tracked nearly 40,000 older adults for more than 15 years found that people who ate eggs regularly were far less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease than those who never or rarely touched them. The most frequent egg eaters, those having five or more servings a week, showed a 27% lower risk.

Alzheimer’s disease casts a long shadow over American life. It is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, and the national costs of managing the disease are projected to exceed $600 billion annually by 2050. During the same period, the share of Americans aged 65 and older is expected to roughly double, from about 10% to 20%. With no cure available and current drug treatments offering limited help, researchers have turned increasing attention to prevention, and specifically to what people eat.

The study, published in The Journal of Nutrition, drew on data from the Adventist Health Study-2, a long-running research project that enrolled more than 96,000 members of the Seventh-day Adventist church across all 50 states between 2002 and 2007. That population is especially useful for studying diet because Adventists have a wide range of eating habits, from strict vegans who never touch an egg to omnivores who eat them daily. By linking participants’ dietary records with Medicare claims data, researchers could track who eventually received a clinical Alzheimer’s diagnosis through the medical system rather than relying on self-reported memory problems.