WEIRD SCIENCE

Man whose body was a brewery

DOCTORS were baffled when a man who regularly appeared very drunk – and tests revealed high levels of alcohol in his blood – insisted he never touched booze.

The 46-year-old had the problem for years, and was accused of being a secret drinker, lost jobs and was arrested for drink driving.

It turned out he had a rare condition called autobrewery syndrome, where yeast in the gut ferments carbohydrates in food into pure alcohol. The journal BMJ Open Gastroenterology reported that the boozy microbes in his gut were wiped out by antibiotics.