The use of alcohol can increase the probability of developing 60 dangerous diseases, researchers have concluded.

Cirrhosis of the liver is paralysis and cancer of the liver, which is already well known as a consequence of excessive alcohol consumption.

But the University of Oxford researchers, who studied the data of men living in China, found that it can also increase the likelihood of gout and cataracts.

Experts have stated that the results of their research show that alcohol consumption is associated with a much wider range of diseases than previously thought.

Excessive consumption of alcohol is the cause of about 3 million deaths in the world every year.

Oxford researchers teamed up with their colleagues from Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Medicine to conduct the study.

They looked at data from a Chinese database of more than 512,000 people, with an average age of 52.

They studied disease histories over 12 years to assess how alcohol affected the likelihood of developing 207 different diseases.

The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Medicine; they showed that alcohol consumption increases the probability of developing 60 diseases. Among them are 28 diseases, such as liver, colon, and rectal cancer. They were put on the World Health Organization list.

But 33 more diseases which had not been defined before, such as gout, cataracts, some fractures and stomach ulcers, which are connected with alcohol consumption, were found out.

Also, this group of researchers found out the dependence on the dose of alcohol: every fourth cup a day increases the risk of alcohol-related diseases by 14 percent. And drinking that amount of alcohol increases the risk of 33 new alcohol-related diseases by six percent.