A 47-year-old Belgian man kept drinking randomly for two months, despite not having a drop of alcohol to drink. The culprits? A home brewery that fermented in its own gut.
After a prescribed low-carb diet and anti-fungal medications did nothing, stupid doctors from University Hospital Ghent soon got to the point: the man was, in fact, drunk with alcohol produced in his own gut, thanks to a condition known as car -brewery syndrome (ABS).
In ABS, the gut microbes convert carbohydrates into ethanol, so the unnamed man was quite literally high on his own supply, complete with elevated blood alcohol levels and powerful dragon breath – which ultimately cost him his driver’s license during a random search engine test.
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Doctors opted for a fecal transplant to try to end the man’s fraudulent bender. Fecal transplants are a relatively recent addition to the medical canon of treatments, in which donor stool is inserted directly into the colon or administered through a nasal tube, which then passes into the patient’s throat and into its gastrointestinal tract.
In some cases, medical personnel will freeze-dry a fecal sample in a pill and the patient will swallow it.
No matter how the man received the fecal transplant, kindly donated by his 22-year-old daughter, it had immediate and lasting effect, with no symptoms reported in his 34-month follow-up appointment, thus putting an end to his horrific ex-bear- ience.
Auto-brewing syndrome is more common in those living with diabetes, obesity or conditions such as Crohn’s disease. The so-called ‘good bacteria’ in the gut are believed to be responsible for the condition, but we do not yet fully understand them from the roots.
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BEER converted into ENERGY
“Fecal transplants should be attempted in patients with ABS in the future [auto brewery syndrome]. Setting up a trial would be the ideal scenario, but given the rarity of the syndrome, this type of trial will not be possible in humans. “ said Dr. Danny De Looze, co-author of the patient’s case study.
Although the extremely rare condition is not likely to be tequil-ya, it can cause major problems in daily life, including impaired liver function.
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