Background and Aim: Hyperlipidemia, particularly hypercholesterolemia, is one of the major risk factors in cardiovascular diseases. Egg yolk is one of the richest sources of dietary cholesterol in human nutrition. Because egg yolk has relative high cholesterol, we wish to investigate the effect of consuming regular eggs on serum lipid profile. Materials and Methods: In this semi-experimental trail, twenty six healthy normolipidemic volunteers (8 men and 18 women) were recruited for the study and two well-cooked moderately sized eggs were added to their breakfast in addition to their regular diet for 4 weeks. Fasting blood samples, the dietary intakes, serum lipids, and anthropometric measurements were compared before and after starting new diet applying paired t-test using SPSS software (ver.13) for windows. Results: The 4-week egg consumption (2 per day) significantly increased the average level of total cholesterol, LDL-C and triglyceride from 129.76, 72.19 and 99.63 mg/dl before having egg to 160.69, 98.03 and 105.34 mg/dl, respectively, after using eggs (p=0.0001). While HDL-C decreased significantly from 54.84 mg/dl to 50.73 mg/dl (p=0.008), cholesterol intake significantly increased from 251.2 mg/day to 534.1 mg/day (p=0.0001). Conclusion: Because egg yolk has relatively high cholesterol concentrations, limited egg consumption is often recommended to reduce serum cholesterol concentrations and to help prevent coronary heart diseases (CHD).

Keywords: Regular egg, serum lipid, cholesterol

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