Are you a man who has three or four drinks a day, or a woman who has two or three? That rate of consumption, over a period of 10 years, could be enough to slowly replace a healthy liver with a swollen, yellow mass of useless scar tissue - a condition called cirrhosis.

Do teetotallers need to worry?

Maybe. Excessive drinking is far from the sole cause of the condition. Anything that attacks the liver for prolonged periods of time, including a severe bout of hepatitis B, C or D, can weaken its ability to regenerate healthy tissue.

What are the symptoms?

You won't notice much until the disease is fairly well-advanced. Then expect an abundance of symptoms, including itching, nausea, jaundiced skin and exhaustion. Certain toxins that would otherwise be dealt with by the liver can build up in the brain, resulting in personality changes and even coma.

Am I going to die?

Possibly - total liver failure is fatal. The trick is to catch the disease before it gets to that stage.

Is there a cure?

Scar tissue stays scarred, and it's difficult, if not impossible, to heal the diseased parts of the liver. Instead, it is the underlying causes that must be treated: you will need antiviral drugs in the case of hepatitis. And a diseased liver will always be grateful if you cut out alcohol. As a last resort you can wait for a liver transplant - though waiting times may be getting shorter as the technique of lifting half a liver from a live donor becomes more widespread (the two halves grow into full-sized livers in around 12 weeks). This week the NHS announced that it will carry out "living liver" transplants from next April in Scotland.