In Belgium, a man was released after being charged with drunk driving. However, his body was found to be producing alcohol due to a strange syndrome.
The 40-year-old driver had to appear in court because he allegedly drove a vehicle while drunk.
The tests always showed that the 40-year-old man was drunk, but he denied having consumed alcoholic beverages.
Lawyer Anse Ghesquiere said they had to prove to judges their client’s innocence given the allegations.
So medical tests confirmed that the man suffered from a strange syndrome known as homebrewing or drunkenness.
A man produces alcohol in his body due to a rare syndrome. Photo: Pixabay
This strange disease causes a person’s body Produce your own alcohol from a fermentation process in the digestive system.
These results and the doctors’ statements made it possible to prove that this man was actually not guilty of the accusation.
In this way, the judges decided to dismiss the charge and fine for alleged drunk driving, citing “force majeure”.
What is Intestinal Fermentation Syndrome?
This syndrome occurs when a person’s digestive system begins to produce alcohol (endogenous ethanol) with the food they eat.
“It is characterized by the endogenous production of alcohol. It typically presents with signs of alcohol poisoning, such as staggering gait, slurred speech, gastrointestinal distress, and confusion,” explains the US National Library of Medicine.
For example, foods rich in carbohydrates such as bread and potatoes cause the body to start “producing” alcohol.
Very few people in the world suffer from the so-called autobrewery syndrome and therefore it has hardly been studied.
See more:A man suffers from a rare ‘demon face syndrome’ and scientists have managed to decipher how they see faces
This is not the first time this man has been in trouble with the law. A test from April 2022 showed 0.91 mg per liter of exhaled air.
A month later, a new check showed 0.71 mg/l, while the legal limit in Belgium is 0.22 mg.
The driver had already been sentenced to a fine and a temporary revocation of his driving license in 2019 for the same reasons. Although he always declared himself innocent and claimed he didn’t drink.
This way, this man didn’t know that he was actually suffering from this rare syndrome where his body produced alcohol and got him into trouble.
Doctors put him on a special low-carbohydrate diet to manage the symptoms of his illness.
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