Library · Disease
Auto-brewery syndrome
Make it clearer
Auto-brewery syndrome, also called gut fermentation syndrome, is a situation in which alcohol turns up in the body even though the person has had nothing to drink. The ethanol, which is the alcohol in beer, wine, and liquor, is made on the inside, in the digestive tract.
What causes it is an imbalance among the microbes living in the small intestine, what doctors call a dysbiosis: bacteria or fungi that can ferment end up in excess. Fermenting is the same thing a brewery does with sugar, only here it happens in the gut. The liver normally breaks alcohol down as it appears, but when fermentation makes more than the liver can handle, the ethanol builds up.
The result is a person who shows the signs and symptoms of being drunk but insists, correctly, that they have had nothing to drink.
In brief
In auto-brewery syndrome the ethanol does not come from a drink: it is produced inside the digestive tract itself through fermentation by bacteria or fungi.
The underlying problem is dysbiosis of the small intestine, with an overabundance of ethanol-generating microbes; their fermentation produces more alcohol than the liver can metabolize.
The person therefore presents with signs and symptoms of alcohol intoxication in the absence of any alcohol ingestion.
Sources (1)
- National Center for Biotechnology InformationAuto-Brewery Syndrome. StatPearls
This page explains the topic in general terms; it does not tell anyone what treatment to follow.
Updated