A woman who has been binge drinking alcohol for the last 40 years finally developed a “buffalo hump” on her back as a result.
According to the journal BMJ Case Reports, doctors at the Brooklyn Hospital Center diagnosed the unnamed 64-year-old woman with the rare illness Madelung disease after discovering her drinking problem.
Typically found in male alcoholics, Madelung disease causes fatty tumors, called lipomas, to form all over the body.
“At first glance, we noticed multiple swellings all over the body - around the neck, upper back and upper extremities, which were very peculiar to the medical team,” the medical team wrote.
After speaking with their patient, doctors finally learned that the woman had been experiencing extreme muscle weakness for about a year before being diagnosed.
Just two weeks before talking to the doctors about her rare condition, the woman admitted to binge drinking.
Further blood testing revealed that the decades-long alcoholic was suffering from ketoacidosis, normally found in individuals suffering from Type 1 diabetes, which causes the body to start metabolizing fat.
Four decades of extreme drinking also left the patient with fatty liver disease.
After sending her in for a number of scans, doctors found that the fatty tumors had grown all around the woman’s shoulders, triceps, and biceps.
While the symptoms of the rare disease vary from person to person, the fatty tissue generally builds up around the skin, leading to an ultimate loss of mobility in the neck.
It is still not known why excessive alcohol consumption can lead to the disease over time, but medical experts believe it has something to do with cell change.
The woman later revealed that she had been noticing the fatty tumors popping up around her body for about five years, but never sought help because she didn’t care about her appearance.
