New Diagnosis
They found that Leland’s urine was missing two essential metabolites that would have been present had she been drinking. After doing some research, his team determined that Leland suffered from a previously unknown medical condition: auto-brewery syndrome, or “bladder fermentation syndrome.”
Back on the List
As a result of the experiment, the UPMC transplant team decided to reconsider Leland for a life-saving transplant. Surprisingly, Leland’s experience wasn’t the only recorded instance of the auto-brewery syndrome. When one 46-year-old man was pulled over for drunk driving, no one believed his insistence that he hadn’t had anything to drink...