This woman from Pittsburgh is not an alcoholic but always urinate alcohol. This is the first documented case in a living person with an unusual medical condition where alcohol brews naturally in the bladder.
The researchers call this rare phenomena “urinary auto-brewery syndrome” or “bladder fermentation syndrome”. This is similar to another condition where one gets inebriated by ingesting carbohydrates without taking alcohol, they added.
The 61 year old woman was at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre Presbyterian Hospital for liver issues. She had checked in for liver transplant and the doctors suspected that the alcohol consumption led to her liver damage. They concluded this as her urine tests for alcohol was always positive.
In the beginning, the doctors thought that the lady hid her drinking habit. Te doctors had repeatedly asked the woman if she used to take alcohol. But she denied of taking alcohol. However, they found that the results of plasma test for ethanol and urine test for ethyl glucuronide and ethyl sulphate (metabolites of ethanol), were negative. But the result of urine test for ethanol was positive.
Another thing that the doctors found was the presence of large amounts of glucose with abundant levels of budding yeast in urine. The researchers said that they doubted if the yeast (Candida glabrata, a natural yeast in the body) formation in bladder might have led to this condition.