这个标题完全歪曲了该研究实际测试的内容。

研究人员并没有让人们吃鸡蛋。他们没有测量鸡蛋摄入量。他们也没有证明吃鸡蛋更多的人会发展成房颤。

他们是在5090名已经接受心脏导管插入术的人中测量了TMAO。TMAO水平较高的人更有可能已经患有房颤。这是在高风险医院人群中的一种关联，而不是鸡蛋导致任何问题的证据。

涉及胆碱和TMAO的实验主要是在易患异常心律的基因改造小鼠身上进行的。将“小鼠被给予浓缩胆碱后出现了心律变化”变成“吃鸡蛋会引发致命中风”这是小报式科学的巅峰之作。

TMAO还很大程度上取决于肠道细菌、肝脏代谢和肾脏清除。肾脏疾病和代谢功能障碍会提高TMAO水平，因此高TMAO可能部分反映了现有疾病，而不是昨天的早餐。研究在考察因果方向时，特别警告了混杂因素和逆向因果关系。

该标题悄无声息地忽略了这样一个事实：循环中的TMAO与鱼类摄入的关联比与红肉的关联更一致，而其他人类研究则完全没有发现与肉类、鸡蛋或鱼类的关联。没有人会发表“鲑鱼导致致命中风”的标题，因为这会暴露这种责怪食物的论点是多么薄弱。

This headline is a complete distortion of what the study actually tested.

The researchers did not feed people eggs. They did not measure egg intake. They did not show that people who ate more eggs developed atrial fibrillation.

They measured TMAO in 5,090 people who were already undergoing cardiac catheterisation. People with higher TMAO were more likely to already have atrial fibrillation. That is an association in a high-risk hospital population, not proof that eggs caused anything.

The experiments involving choline and TMAO were mainly performed in genetically altered mice predisposed to abnormal heart rhythms. Turning “mice given concentrated choline developed rhythm changes” into “eating eggs triggers deadly strokes” is tabloid science at its finest.

TMAO also depends heavily on gut bacteria, liver metabolism and kidney clearance. Kidney disease and metabolic dysfunction can raise TMAO, so high TMAO may partly reflect existing illness rather than yesterday’s breakfast. Research examining causal direction has specifically warned about confounding and reverse causation.

The the headline quietly ignores that circulating TMAO has been associated more consistently with fish intake than red meat, while other human studies found no association with meat, eggs or fish at all. Nobody is publishing “salmon causes deadly strokes” because it would expose how weak this food-blaming argument is.