Woman drips with sweat from a bite of food due to rare nerve-wiring mix-up

Enlarge (credit: Getty | MICHAEL KAPPELER)

The human body is full of marvels, some even bordering on miraculous. That includes the limited ability for nerves to regenerate after injuries, allowing people to regain some function and feeling. But that wonder can turn, well, unnerving when those regenerated wires end up in a jumble.

Such is the case for a rare neurological condition called gustatory hyperhidrosis, also known as Frey’s syndrome. In this disorder, nerves regenerate after damage to either of the large saliva glands that sit on either side of the face, just in front of the ears, called the parotid glands. But that nerve regrowth goes awry due to a quirk of anatomy that allows the nerves that control saliva production for eating to get tangled with those that control sweating for temperature control.

In this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors in Taiwan report an unusual presentation of the disorder in a 76-year-old woman. She told doctors that, for two years, every time she ate, her face would begin profusely sweating. In the clinic, the doctors observed the phenomenon themselves. They watched as she took a bite of pork jerky and began chewing.