Woman Has DUI Charges Dropped Due To Auto-Brewery Syndrome

I'm sure most drivers charged with a DUI claim they "only had a few" when they're arrested, but a recent court case proves sometimes they're telling the truth- because they suffer from Auto-brewery syndrome.

Auto-brewery syndrome causes food and drinks to ferment in their stomachs, which can cause blood alcohol content levels to spike and result in a misreading.

A schoolteacher from upstate New York recently had her DUI charges dismissed when she submitted medical proof that her BAC was 4 times over the legal limit due to this strange syndrome.

(YouTube Link)

Doctors monitored the woman for a day and discovered her average BAC was .34, four times the legal limit in New York, even though she didn't drink a drop of alcohol.

-Via AOL

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B. Cordell and J. McCarthy, "A Case Study of Gut Fermentation Syndrome (Auto-Brewery) with Saccharomyces cerevisiae as the Causative Organism," International Journal of Clinical Medicine, Vol. 4 No. 7, 2013, pp. 309-312. doi: 10.4236/ijcm.2013.47054.

Appears to be a real thing.

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I highly doubt this is a real thing. The human gut cannot contain enough fermentable material to create that much alcohol. I know of at least one way to cheat the testing for a day. A week of isolation would have generated withdrawal.

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I hope this means she will not be driving until she can bring her metabolism under control.

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