Warning that drinking ANY amount of alcohol can increase the risk of 60 diseases

Drinking alcohol may increase your risk of developing 60 diseases, a large study suggests.

Cirrhosis of the liver – scarring caused by ongoing, long-term liver damage – strokes and cancer are already well-established risks of excessive drinking.

But researchers at the University of Oxford, who analyzed data from half a million men living in China, have now found that it may increase the risk of gout and cataracts.

Other conditions never previously associated with alcohol in the study include fractures, lung cancer and circulatory disorders.

Some associations were evident for low amounts of alcohol, even for intakes under NHS guidelines.

Experts said the findings show drinking alcohol is favored by a “much wider range of illnesses” than previously thought.

Excessive alcohol consumption is estimated to cause about 3 million deaths worldwide each year.

The NHS recommends that men and women drink no more than 14 units of alcohol per week, one unit of which is half a pint of beer or a small glass of wine.

But the World Health Organization (WHO) says no amount of alcohol is safe.

However, this is hotly debated. Studies have suggested that a glass of wine or a pint of beer a day can prevent numerous diseases.

Researchers from Oxford collaborated with academics from both Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

They examined data from a Chinese database containing the health information of more than 512,000 adults averaging 52 years old. It contained details of their drinking patterns.

About a third of men drank alcohol regularly – at least once a week – while only two percent of women drank.

As a result, women were used as a control group to confirm that increased disease risk in men was caused by alcohol consumption, rather than a mechanism related to genetic variants.

They analyzed 12-year hospital records to assess how alcohol affected the risk of developing 207 different diseases. Some were not medical illnesses as such, including transportation accidents and injuries.

The findings, published in the journal Naturopathy, show that alcohol consumption increases the risk of 60 diseases in men in China.

This included 28 diseases previously identified by the World Health Organization as alcohol-related, such as liver, colon and rectal cancer.

However, they also identified 33 previously undiagnosed cases, such as gout, cataracts, some fractures and stomach ulcers.

Certain drinking patterns — such as daily drinking, binge eating, or drinking outside of meals — particularly increased the risk of certain diseases, including cirrhosis of the liver.

The team also identified dose-dependent relationships, with every four drinks a day associated with a 14 percent higher risk of alcohol-related disease.

Drinking that much alcohol also carried a six percent increased risk of developing the 33 newly identified alcohol-related diseases.

In addition, every four drinks a day was associated with a more than two-fold higher risk of liver cirrhosis and gout.

Men who regularly drank alcohol had a higher risk of admission and developing possible illnesses than men who drank only occasionally.

The study demonstrates the impact that alcohol intake may have on the risk of disease in populations around the world, the team said.

Pek Kei Im, author of the study, said: ‘Alcohol consumption is unfavorably related to a much wider range of diseases than previously established, and our findings show that these associations are likely causal.’

Professor Liming Li, a senior author and CKB co-PI from Peking University, said: ‘Alcohol consumption is on the rise in China, especially among men.

“This large collaborative study demonstrates the need to strengthen alcohol control policies in China.”

Iona Millwood, an associate professor at Oxford Population Health and author of a senior study, said: ‘It is becoming clear that harmful use of alcohol is one of the leading risk factors for ill health, both in China and globally.’

Fellow researcher Professor Zhengming Chen said: ‘This study provides important causal evidence of the magnitude of alcohol-related harm, which is critical to prevention strategies in several countries.’