Excessive consumption of alcohol can cause liver disease, as well as harming many other body organs. The prevalence of alcoholic liver disease (ALD) in a population is usually determined by measuring death rates from alcoholic cirrhosis (in which healthy liver tissue becomes increasingly replaced by scar tissue).These rates have increased alarmingly in recent years. Death rates in the UK rose by up to 88 per cent between 1974 and 1994 with the highest increase in young men aged 35-44 (7.6 deaths per year per 100,000 people).

The symptoms of ALD are usually non-specific, and do not necessarily indicate the severity of the underlying liver damage. Many people will have vague symptoms such as fatigue, nausea and vomiting ( typically in the morning), diarrhoea or abdominal pains. Many patients, even with advanced ALD will have no symptoms and are detected by the finding of liver blood tests performed as part of routine health screening, or during the investigation of other conditions.

Only in the more advanced stages of decompensated ALD will the sufferer present with more specific liver-related symptoms such as jaundice, ascites (fluid collecting in the abdomen, causing distension), haematemesis (vomiting of blood) or encephalopathy (confusion, reduced level of awareness and altered sleep pattern, eventually progressing to coma). These are signs of severe liver damage and require urgent medical treatment.