Pittsburgh: A woman in Pittsburgh has become the first documented case in a living person of an unusual medical condition where alcohol naturally brews in the bladder from the fermentation of yeast.
The condition, which researchers propose to call either ‘bladder fermentation syndrome’ or ‘urinary auto-brewery syndrome’, is similar to another incredibly rare condition, auto-brewery syndrome, where simply ingesting carbohydrates can be enough to make you inebriated, even without consuming any alcohol via regular means.
In the new case, doctors became aware of what seems to be a related syndrome, after attending upon a 61-year-old patient who presented with liver damage and poorly controlled diabetes.
The woman visited University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre Presbyterian Hospital for placement on a liver transplant waitlist, with doctors having previously suspected her problems stemmed from alcohol addiction, due to repeated urine tests for alcohol showing consistently positive.
“Initially, our encounters were similar, leading our clinicians to believe that she was hiding an alcohol use disorder,” her doctors explain in a new case report.
“However, we noted that plasma test results for ethanol and urine test results for ethyl glucuronide and ethyl sulfate, which are the metabolites of ethanol, were negative, whereas urine test results for ethanol were positive.”
Furthermore, in addition to consistently denying having consumed alcohol, the patient did not appear to show signs of intoxication during visits to the clinic, even though her urine showed high levels of ethanol content. (Science Alert)
