Jennifer Tsang in The Scientist:
Imagine getting intoxicated without drinking a drop of alcohol. This is what happens in people with auto-brewery syndrome (ABS), where microbes in the gut produce alcohol that then becomes absorbed into the blood stream at high levels. It’s a rare condition, and for those with ABS, getting a diagnosis can be difficult. There are multiple medical visits, doctors that don’t believe the condition is real, and a lengthy test that involves drinking glucose and seeing what happens to blood alcohol levels hours later. “Most of the published literature right now are really case reports,” said Bernd Schnabl, a physician scientist at the University of California, San Diego.
Schnabl coauthored a paper that was recently published in Nature Microbiology documenting the largest study to date on ABS, which included 22 patients with ABS compared to 21 unaffected household partners as controls.1 The scale of the study helped solidify the role of specific bacteria and their metabolic pathways in ABS, providing a way forward for exploring treatment options.
More here.
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