LIVER disease caused by drinking is destroying more young lives in the region, according to an expert.

Professor Mike Bramble, of James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough, said he has seen a 50 per cent rise in admissions due to alcohol-related liver disease in the past decade.

In the early 1990s, only one or two places on his 30-bed ward would be occupied by alcohol-damaged patients.

Now, it is not unusual to have a quarter of all the beds occupied by patients - usually young men - suffering from alcoholic liver disease.

In severe cases, unless they can conquer their drinking addiction and undergo a liver transplant, they will die.

Prof Bramble blamed the cheapness and availability of drink and a culture which equated having a good time with "getting absolutely plastered".

His comments followed research by doctors in the West Midlands, who found that the number of people dying from liver abuse soared between 1993 and 2000.

The doctors calculated that the number of people whose fatal liver disease was caused by excess alcohol in their area had increased threefold, from 2.8 cases per 100,000 in 1993, to eight cases per 100,000 in 2000.

Dr Neil Fisher, a consultant enterologist in Dudley, West Midlands, said the increase was "worrying and shows no sign of abating".

Prof Bramble said he believed the situation in the North-East was similar. "I have been here 20 years and the number of patients with alcoholic liver disease has gone up and up. I think it is very sad. A lot of these young men who die are in their 30s."

The main reason many died was that they were not eligible for a transplant because they could not stop drinking.

Prof Bramble said not all liver disease was caused by alcohol, but he was concerned about the heavy drinking culture.

"The safe weekly limits are 14 units for women and 20 for men. If you go above them, you run the risk of liver disease," he said.

He urged heavy drinkers to ask for a liver function test when they visit their GP.

"A lot of people are drinking at levels which are frankly dangerous. Liver disease is a silent killer. You don't have symptoms until you have got cirrhosis, when it is all a bit too late."