cholesterol, according to a study made public this week.

The study, funded by the Egg Nutrition Council, an egg industry group, and presented at the American Heart Association's annual scientific sessions, showed that people with high cholesterol who watch their diet and have low fat levels can eat two eggs a day without boosting blood cholesterol levels.

But those with high cholesterol and high fat levels did see their cholesterol rise.

In the study by the University of Washington's Northwest Lipid Research Clinic in Seattle, 161 men and women were either given two eggs or an egg substitute a day over a period of 12 weeks.

All those in the study followed guidelines of the Heart Association's Step-One Diet that restricts fat intake to less than 30 percent of daily calories and cholesterol to less than 300 milligrams a day.

"If they were on a low-fat diet, eating eggs didn't make any difference if only their cholesterol was high,'' said Barbara Retzlaff, the research clinic's head dietician.

"If their cholesterol and triglycerides were high, then eating the eggs did raise their LDL cholesterol.'' Triglycerides are fats that come from food or are made in the body. LDL cholesterol is the carrier of harmful cholesterol in the blood.

Still on the subject of cholesterol, Finnish researchers have whipped up a batch of margarine that lowers cholesterol levels and even tastes good.

The new scientific spread, developed by a team from the University of Helsinki, slows the body's tendency to absorb cholesterol from food.

Finding ways to prevent heart disease by lowering cholesterol has been a hot topic at this year's scientific meeting of the American Heart Association.

This week, Scottish doctors described the impressive power of the so-called statin drugs to ward off heart-related deaths in people with no outward signs of heart disease.

Some experts say cholesterol-lowering foods may eventually offer a cheaper first step than drugs for those who need to watch their cholesterol.

Dr. Tatu A. Miettinen and colleagues described their margarine in a report in yesterday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

They developed a form of a natural plant alcohol called sitostanol and added it to ordinary margarine. Sitostanol is not absorbed itself, but it interferes with cholesterol absorption by the intestines.

They tested it for a year on 153 volunteers whose cholesterol averaged a mildly elevated 235. Cholesterol levels were virtually unchanged in those who ate ordinary margarine. But among the people who ate margarine with sitostanol, cholesterol fell to an average of 210.

The researchers said the volunteers could tell the new margarine from the ordinary kind, but they "could not decide which of the two tasted better.'' Dr. Terje R. Pedersen of Aker Hospital in Oslo, Norway, wrote in an editorial in the journal that researchers must now study the safety of the margarine and its effect on people on low-cholesterol diets.

Losing 10 pounds and modestly cutting salt intake significantly lowered the risk of heart attacks and strokes in people with blood pressure only slightly above normal -- a group that includes 80 million Americans.

The benefits of lowering blood pressure are well known in people with hypertension, or blood pressure higher than 140 millimetres over 90. The picture has been less clear for those with blood pressure lower than that but still above the normal 120 over 80.

A study reported this week at the American Heart Association's annual meeting showed that a 10-pound weight loss and a 20-25 percent reduction in salt intake produced a drop of about two millimetres in both the top and bottom blood-pressure numbers.

That may sound small, but if that were achieved throughout the American population, it would save tens of thousands of lives, said the study's author, Dr. Paul Whelton of Johns Hopkins Hospital.

The study used personal counselling to help 2,382 overweight men and women lose weight and eat less salt. After six months, the researchers measured a two-millimetre drop in blood pressure.

One problem, though, was that the participants did not maintain their weight loss, salt reduction and blood pressure drop over the three-year course of the study. By the end of the study, the blood pressure drop was only one millimetre, and the average weight loss four to five pounds, Whelton said.

Whelton's conclusion is that watching one's diet over the long term and keeping blood pressure down will require deeper changes in the way Americans live and eat.

"We have to work with manufacturers to lower sodium. Eighty percent of our sodium comes from processed foods,'' not from the salt shaker on the dinner table, Whelton said. The development of more low-fat foods is also important, he said, as well as "making it easier and fun for us to get more exercise.''