Among study participants, every 300 milligrams of cholesterol added to the daily diet increased the risk of cardiovascular disease by 17 percent and premature death from any cause by 18 percent during an average follow-up of 17.5 years, the study found.

Given that the yolk of one large egg contains up to 200 milligrams of cholesterol, and dietary cholesterol can raise blood levels of artery-damaging LDL-cholesterol in some people, it is not the first time eggs have been pilloried as a hazard to the heart. For decades we’ve been advised to limit eggs and keep daily cholesterol intake at or below 300 milligrams.

But before you give up eggs entirely or switch to egg whites, it’s worth considering the study’s limitations and how the findings fit into current American eating patterns and previous studies of the relationship of eggs and cholesterol to health.

The study was based on an analysis of 29,615 community-dwelling adults without known heart disease who reported at the start what they ate along with a slew of health-related lifestyle habits like smoking and alcohol consumption and health variables like weight, blood pressure and blood lipids. In the nearly two decades that followed, 5,400 people had a cardiovascular event (usually a heart attack or stroke) and 6,132 died from any cause.

Seeking to clarify how consuming cholesterol influenced the risk of cardiovascular disease and death, Dr. Zhong and co-authors zeroed in on egg consumption, the cleanest dietary measure of how much cholesterol participants ate. The team concluded that as little as half an egg a day, or about three large eggs a week, increased a person’s chances of developing cardiovascular disease by 6 percent and of dying from any cause by 8 percent during the study period.