Three alcoholic drinks a day may cause liver cancer

Consuming just three alcoholic drinks a day can be enough to cause liver cancer, experts have found.

The WCRF recommends that women should limit themselves to no more than one drink a day, and men to two

A comprehensive review of 34 studies undertaken by The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) revealed “strong” evidence that this level of alcohol is likely to lead to liver cancer, with the risk increasing by 4% for every 10g of alcohol consumed.

The study analysis spanned the lifestyles of 8.2 million people, of which more than 24,500 had the disease.

Director of the charity’s UK branch, Amanda Mclean, told The Guardian: “Until now we were uncertain about the amount of alcohol likely to lead to liver cancer. But the research reviewed in this report is strong enough, for the first time, to be more specific about this.”

At present, approximately one in 100 men and one in 200 women develop the disease – which has one of the lowest survival rates among the 200 different types of cancer – at some point throughout their lifetime.

The WCRF recommends that women should limit themselves to no more than one drink a day, and men to two, to minimise the risk of the disease.

Paul Pharoah, professor of cancer epidemialogy at Cambridge University, dismissed the report’s findings but supported the drink recommendations by the WCRF.

Pharoah said: “I do not think that the published data are sufficiently robust to conclude that three drinks a day specifically is associated with an increased risk of primary liver cancer.”

He added that two of the 34 studies showed consuming between one and three drinks a day did not heighten the risk, but four or more drinks did increase the likelihood of developing the disease.