Relationship between pork consumption and cirrhosis.

An investigation of the relationship between per-caput consumption of total fat, beef, and pork in several countries and mortality rates for cirrhosis showed a correlation between alcohol consumption and cirrhosis mortality of 0.64 (p less than 0.01), and a correlation between pork consumption and cirrhosis mortality of 0.40 (p less than 0.05). The correlation between cirrhosis mortality and the product of both alcohol and pork consumption was highly significant (r = 0.98, p less than 0.001). In countries with low alcohol consumption, no correlation was obtained between alcohol consumption and cirrhosis. However, a significant correlation was obtained between cirrhosis and pork. A similar relationship was seen in the ten Canadian provinces, where there was no correlation between cirrhosis mortality and alcohol consumption, but a significant correlation was obtained with pork.