Daily drinking of alcohol may be worse for the liver than binge-drinking, according to Danish researchers.
The findings apply to men and researchers say that even abstaining one or two days a week makes a difference.
Researchers set out to establish the effect of different drinking patterns on the development of cirrhosis of the liver.
They studied more than 55,000 people aged between 50 and 64 in a major national health study. Some 257 men and 85 women developed alcoholic cirrhosis.
The study also found that drinking beer and liquor were a bigger risk for cirrhosis than wine. They also found no cases of cirrhosis among people who had given up alcohol.
Reporting in the Journal of Hepatology, the researchers say not enough women were affected to reach any conclusions.
Researcher Dr Gro Askgaard, of Copenhagen University Hospital, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark, said: “For the first time, our study points to a risk difference between drinking daily and drinking five or six days a week in the general male population, since earlier studies were conducted on alcohol misusers and patients referred for liver disease and compared daily drinking to binge pattern or episodic drinking.
“Since the details of alcohol induced liver injury are unknown, we can only speculate that the reason may be that daily alcohol exposure worsens liver damage or inhibits liver regeneration.”
Dr Jürgen Rehm, of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Canada, praised the findings as "timely".
He said: “This is a timely contribution about one of the most important, if not the most important risk factor for liver cirrhosis globally, because our overall knowledge about drinking patterns and liver cirrhosis is sparse and in part contradictory.
"The question of binge drinking patterns and mortality is far from solved, and there may be genetic differences or other covariates not yet discovered, which play a role and could explain the different empirical findings.”
Alcohol drinking pattern and risk of alcoholic liver cirrhosis: A prospective cohort study. Journal of Hepatology 26 January 2015; Volume 62, Issue 5 (May 2015 [abstract]
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