The end of 2025 is right around the corner, and that can only mean one thing: It’s time once again to revisit the weirdest medical cases that passed our way this year.
These bizarre tales of medicine, retold by doctors, will satisfy anyone with a macabre sense of curiosity. But often, they also provide an important lesson about a real—but rare—health risk, or even lead to a genuine discovery.
As a reminder, these are case reports that were published in a scientific journal or otherwise made the news in 2025. And be warned: you’re going to need a strong stomach for some of them.
The butter-handed man
In January, Florida doctors reported on a 40-something man who had developed “yellowish nodules” throughout his hands and elbows.
They soon determined that his discoloration was the result of having extremely high levels of blood cholesterol—so much so he was literally leaking deposits of cholesterol through his skin. The condition, formally called xanthelasma, was caused by the man’s switch to a carnivore diet eight months earlier, one in which he regularly ate six to nine pounds of cheese, copious sticks of butter, and daily hamburgers stuffed with even more fat.
Perhaps the most amazing part of this story is that aside from his skin problems, the man reported losing weight and feeling better than ever while on the diet.
The doctors didn’t detail whether the man modified his butter-rich diet following his diagnosis. For his sake, though, it’d probably be best. The condition itself is harmless, but high blood cholesterol can raise the risk of future cardiovascular problems.
A deeply unlucky kidney transplant
In March, local health officials in Michigan and Ohio reported one of the strangest rabies deaths ever documented—one caused by the normally life-saving gift of organ transplantation.
Last December, the victim was given a kidney from a deceased donor; a month later, they died of rabies. Though the procedure occurred in Ohio, the person died in their home state of Michigan, making it the first rabies case seen in Michigan in about 15 years.
Rabies is exceptionally rare in the U.S., with most cases linked to bites from wild animals. But this sort of situation is even rarer. According to a CDC report on the case published this month, this is only the fourth ever transplant-related cluster of rabies transmission seen in the U.S. since 1978.
There is somewhat of a happy ending to this one at least. As it turns out, three other people were given a corneal graft from the same deceased donor. Once the death was discovered, the recipients had their grafts removed and they were placed on post-exposure prophylaxis. Fortunately, all three avoided developing rabies, which is nearly always lethal once symptoms begin.
The brain-eating RV amoeba
In June, federal and local health officials in Texas detailed a woman who died from an infection of Naegleria fowleri, aka the brain-eating amoeba.
These tiny creatures typically stick to eating bacteria in their freshwater environment. And even swallowing water containing N. fowleri will cause no harm. But if these amoebas reach your brain (usually through water entering your nose), they can literally start to feast on your brain tissue and trigger a massive bout of inflammation. This infection is called primary amebic meningoencephalitis, and it has a near 100% fatality rate.
There have only been around 150 cases of PAM reported in the U.S. since the amoeba was discovered in the 1960s, but this case was weirder still. The woman likely contracted the infection through performing a nasal irrigation with tap water sourced from her recreational vehicle. Though officials couldn’t find any direct traces of the amoeba near the campground where she visited, they did find the RV’s water system wasn’t properly disinfected to prevent contamination.
Health officials note that nasal irrigation should always be done using distilled, sterilized, or boiled and cooled tap water.
THC-laced pizza
Many a person has knowingly combined cannabis with pizza to great enjoyment. Still, that’s not what the customers of the beloved Famous Yeti’s Pizza in Stoughton, Wisconsin were expecting to get.
In July, local health officials reported that nearly 100 customers at Famous Yeti’s ate food accidentally cooked with THC oil over the course of three days in October 2024 (the report doesn’t ID the restaurant, but other media reports have). Seven customers were ultimately sent to a local hospital with symptoms like dizziness, sleepiness, and anxiety, while eight children were poisoned as well, one of whom briefly developed hallucinations.
Officials determined that the incident was simply an unfortunate mix-up. The restaurant had run out of its cooking oil and began using oil from a shared kitchen—oil that the owner assumed was canola oil—to make the dough for its pizzas, sandwiches, and other bread-filled goods. The oil was actually used by a nearby business to make its THC edibles.
At the end of the day, though, no one was seriously hurt. And Famous Yeti’s seems to be doing just fine.
Worst toothbrushing ever
You might think toothbrushing would be one of the things no one could ever get hurt from. And you’d be wrong.
In July, doctors in Tokyo, Japan reported on a 50-year-old man who had the unbelievably bad luck to faint just as he was brushing his teeth. As doctors eventually found out, the fainting caused his brush to scrape the back of his throat severely enough to trap air inside, raising the risk of a potentially serious infection. Though the man was hospitalized for a week to treat his injury, he did recover with no lasting issues.
And it somehow could have gone worse. In 2023, a different team of doctors in Japan wrote about a man who fell while brushing and got his toothbrush literally lodged through the back of his throat.
The pregnancy that wasn’t
In October, doctors in India described a 38-year-old woman who developed a bizarre form of ovarian cancer, one that mimicked the symptoms of pregnancy.
The woman first visited doctors after testing positive for pregnancy with a urine test. They initially diagnosed her with an ectopic pregnancy, a condition where the embryo forms outside of the uterus (these pregnancies are non-viable). But more detailed imaging revealed she actually had cancer in her right ovary, specifically a non-gestational ovarian choriocarcinoma (NGOC). NGOCs are incredibly rare, accounting for only 0.6% of all reported ovarian germ cell tumors. She also had a pure NGOC, an “exceedingly rare” subtype made completely out of germ cells and no other types of tissue.
Despite the mistaken identity, the woman’s cancer was seemingly caught in time. She appeared to have a complete treatment response to surgery and chemotherapy, though she will need follow-up visits to monitor her risk.
The nose-sucking leech
Here’s one reason to never go hiking, or at least to avoid dunking your head in the local mountain water.
Doctors in China this past October detailed a 38-year-old man whose days of chronic nosebleeds were caused by a leech stuck up his right nostril. The man likely caught his vampiric passenger twenty days earlier when he went mountain climbing. During the trip, he washed his face with spring water, at which point the leech must have made itself cozy inside his nose.
Remarkably, the leech was still alive upon the doctors’ discovery, though they don’t detail what happened to it after they plucked it loose using a suction catheter. The man himself experienced no lasting symptoms following the leech removal, at least not any physical scars.
Milk-leaking armpits
Earlier this fall, doctors in the Philippines reported on a 35-year-old Filipino woman with a remarkably mundane super power: the ability to lactate milk through her armpits.
The woman first noticed something was peculiar about her pits 15 years ago during her first pregnancy. But it wasn’t until her most recent visit that doctors formally discovered that she had ectopic breast tissue along her armpits. Though it had always been there, it’s likely the hormonal changes caused by pregnancy acted as the spark that allowed the armpits to start lactating.
The doctors did recommend that she keep a watchful eye, since the extra breast tissue is at risk of developing the same health problems as the normal kind, including breast cancer. But since her armpits returned to normal after each time she stopped breastfeeding, she chose not to have the tissue removed.
Death by burger
In late November, researchers at the University of Virginia detailed a tragic discovery: the first known death linked to alpha gal syndrome, aka the red meat allergy.
In the summer of 2024, a 47-year-old New Jersey man inexplicably died mere hours after consuming a burger at a neighbor’s barbeque. Though the coroner initially ruled his death as unexplainable, his family reached out to the UVA researchers and asked them for a second opinion. Their lab tests revealed he developed a severe allergic reaction to the sugar alpha-gal on the day of his death—one that almost certainly killed him.
The syndrome is caused by the bite of certain ticks, particularly the lone star tick. For reasons scientists are still trying to understand, this bite can sometimes trigger a new sensitivity to alpha-gal. Since alpha-gal is abundantly found in the muscles of all other mammals besides humans (and primates), the syndrome causes people to become allergic to meat from cows and other common livestock.
Though this is the first death conclusively tied to red meat allergy, cases in general have steadily increased over time thanks to expanding tick populations. It’s estimated that as many as 450,000 Americans have developed alpha-gal syndrome since 2010.
The energy drink stroke
If ever a case exemplified the importance of moderation, it’s this one.
In December, doctors in the UK detailed how a fit, healthy 50-year-old man developed a stroke probably caused by his copious consumption of energy drinks. How many? Usually around eight drinks a day, amounting to about 1.3 grams of caffeine per day—over three times the maximum recommended dose (400 milligrams) for a typical adult. The habit sent his blood pressure skyrocketing to dangerously high levels, which then likely triggered his stroke (no other risk factors were found) and a trip to the hospital.
The man wasn’t aware of how harmful his daily routine was, and to his credit, he quit drinking them as soon as the doctors asked him to. The man’s blood pressure started going back to normal within a week and he’s remained stroke-free for the past eight years; that said, he still has some numbness on his left side from the stroke.
The doctors have called for increased awareness of the cardiovascular risks posed by energy drinks, and possibly more regulation of these products in general.
Read the full article here
