TORONTO -- A medical journal has posted a bizarre case study featuring a man with a smooth tongue who lost his taste buds.
The unnamed 64-year-old went to an oral clinic in Singapore with a “painful, smooth, red tongue and burning sensation around his lips” which had developed six months prior, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
A doctor’s exam found the man was missing the small ridges on his tongue, which include taste buds, resulting in a condition known as atrophic glossitis.
Lab tests revealed the man was suffering from low levels of red blood cells due to a deficiency in vitamin B12.
Doctors prescribed weekly injections of vitamin B12 and the patient’s symptoms “abated after two weeks of treatment.”
The atrophic glossitis had resolved a month later, the case study said.
