The strange man whose stomach… produces beer

Police and doctors did not believe a 46-year-old US man who swore he had not been drinking before being arrested on suspicion of drunk driving.

The man's blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit for operating a car. He refused a breath test, was hospitalized and later released.

Auto Brewery Syndrome (ABS) makes many people miserable.

Researchers then discovered an unusual fact: the presence of fungi in the man's digestive system was converting carbohydrates into alcohol - a rare condition diagnosed as Auto Brewery Syndrome (ABS).

In people with this syndrome, yeast or bacteria in the gut produce ethanol and can cause the patient to have signs of intoxication . This condition, also known as intestinal fermentation syndrome, can occur in healthy people but is more common in patients with diabetes and obesity.

“It's a terrible disease ,” says Barbara Cordell, a researcher on Auto Brewery Syndrome (ABS).

Often people with Auto Brewery Syndrome (ABS) may smell like alcohol or always feel tired to work or spend time with family. Some patients are unemployed because of this condition.

Fahad Malik, head of internal medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (USA), said that these patients often have symptoms similar to those of alcoholics: smell, breath, sleepiness, and changes in gait.

In what cases is alcohol concentration measurement likely to be incorrect?

A breathalyzer or breathalyzer is a device that measures the amount of alcohol in the air a person exhales, from which the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) can be calculated.

Normally, after drinking alcohol, the human body will absorb ethanol in the alcohol through the stomach lining into the blood. Because ethanol is volatile, when the blood is saturated, alcohol will pass through the capillaries in the alveoli of the lungs, a small amount of evaporated ethanol will diffuse into the alveolar sacs and mix with the gases in the lungs.

Breathalyzers have several ways of working.

Breathalyzers work in many ways

Many breathalyzers rely on a chemical reaction. Alcohol vapor in the person's breath reacts with an orange solution in the machine called potassium dichromate. Some machines calculate that when they receive breath, a beam of infrared (IR) radiation is transmitted through the air sampling chamber.

Many factors can affect the results of a breathalyzer test . For example, other compounds in the breath, or the temperature, the health status of the person being tested. Or because body fat does not absorb alcohol, obese people will often have a higher BAC, because the alcohol concentration in their lean tissues is higher.

People with gastroesophageal reflux may also inflate their BAC values ​​higher than their actual BAC, as aerosolized alcohol from the stomach that has not yet been absorbed into the bloodstream may be introduced into their breath through belching.

People with diabetes also often have falsely elevated results because their blood contains high levels of acetone, which breathalyzers can mistake for ethanol.

Auto Brewery Syndrome (ABS) makes many people miserable.

Researchers then discovered an unusual fact: the presence of fungi in the man's digestive system was converting carbohydrates into alcohol - a rare condition diagnosed as Auto Brewery Syndrome (ABS).

In people with this syndrome, yeast or bacteria in the gut produce ethanol and can cause the patient to have signs of intoxication . This condition, also known as intestinal fermentation syndrome, can occur in healthy people but is more common in patients with diabetes and obesity.

“It's a terrible disease ,” says Barbara Cordell, a researcher on Auto Brewery Syndrome (ABS).