A new major study shows that consuming alcohol can increase the risk of developing 60 diseases and health conditions, including at least 30 that were previously not linked to booze.

And in some cases, it does not matter how little you drink.

The study noted the usual suspects such as liver cirrhosis and strokes that one risks from excess drinking.

But data from half a million men in China has now found many non-fatal health issues previously not known to be alcohol-related in that list. These include conditions such as gout and cataracts.

The research was conducted by Oxford University, Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. The findings were published on Thursday on scientific journal Nature Medicine’s website.

The experts said their findings show that consuming alcohol is linked to a “wider range of diseases” and health issues than previously thought. Lung cancer and even fractures have been added to the list, and these were not previously linked to booze.

Some of the links were apparent for even low amounts of alcohol, according to a report in the Daily Mail.

For the purpose of the study, the researchers used data from the China Kadoorie Biobank, a collaborative study of over 512,000 adults recruited during 2004 to 2008 from 10 diverse urban and rural areas across China. Their mean age was 52.

Study participants were interviewed about their lifestyle and behaviours, including detailed alcohol drinking patterns. About a third of the men drank alcohol regularly, meaning to say, at least once a week. For women, that proportion was just 2 per cent.

For this reason, women were used as a control group to examine if excess disease risk in men was caused by drinking alcohol, instead of genetics-related reasons.

The researchers analysed hospital records of 12 years to assess how alcohol affected the risk of developing 207 different diseases.

The findings showed alcohol use increases the risk of 60 diseases and health issues in men in China. They include 28, such as bowel and rectal cancers, that are already established by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as alcohol-related. But they also identified 33 that were not previously established.

Certain drinking patterns, such as drinking daily, were found to particularly increase the risk of some illnesses.

But the team also identified links that depend on how much one drinks. They found that every four drinks per day was associated with a 14 per cent higher risk of having an alcohol-related disease.

That quantity also carried a 6 per cent increased risk of developing the 33 newly identified alcohol-related illnesses.

Men who drank regularly also had a higher risk of developing these illnesses, compared with men who only drank occasionally.

The researchers said their study showed the influence alcohol intake may have on the risk of health issues in populations around the world. “Alcohol consumption is adversely related to a much wider range of diseases than has previously been established, and our findings show these associations are likely to be causal,” said Dr Pek Kei Im, research fellow at Oxford Population Health and a lead author of the paper.

Fellow researcher, Professor Chen Zhengming, said: “This study provides important causal evidence of the scale of alcohol-related harms.”

The WHO says no amount of alcohol is safe. But this has been debated time and again, with some studies suggesting a glass of wine a day, for example, can help reduce the risk of some illnesses.