The Netherlands journal of medicine
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Beer drinker's hyponatraemia, also called beer potomania, is a syndrome of hyponatraemia in patients who consume excessive amounts of beer and have a poor dietary intake. We describe a patient with chronic asymptomatic hyponatraemia due to beer potomania. The pathophysiology of this syndrome, the treatment and prevention are reviewed.
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A 85-year-old woman treated with, among other drugs, a thiazide diuretic presented with a severe hyponatraemia. She met several of the criteria for SIADH and, besides drugs, no cause for SIADH was found. ⋯ This "thiazide provocation test" showed its usefulness in the differential diagnosis of suspected SIADH. Moreover, the test demonstrated the paradoxal effect of thiazide diuretics to cause water retention in susceptible patients.