A man and his mouth got into a hairy situation, according to his doctors. The man developed a fuzzy and starkly green discoloration of his tongue. Thankfully, this condition is usually benign, and his tongue eventually returned to normal.
The strange case was detailed earlier this month in the New England Journal of Medicine. The authors are doctors from the Wright–Patterson Medical Center in Ohio, which serves military personnel at the nearby Air Force base as well as veterans.
According to the report, the 64-year-old man visited the primary care clinic two weeks into developing his off-color mouth. About 21 days earlier, he had finished a course of antibiotics to treat a gum infection. Soon after the tongue became discolored, he was prescribed antifungals under the suspicion that he had contracted oral candidiasis, a type of yeast infection, but to no avail. The doctors then diagnosed the man with a clear-cut case of hairy tongue.
Hairy tongue is caused by the build-up and lengthening of the tiny projections on our tongue called papillae (there are different types of papillae, some of which contain our taste buds). Though it’s not really hair that grows on the tongue, this accumulation is made of keratin, the same major material found in hair. The discoloration of the tongue can be affected by the things our mouths are exposed to, such as certain foods or tobacco, or by the microbes growing on top of it. In some cases, for instance, the condition can cause a build-up of microbes that then start to produce pigments.
Most reported cases of hairy tongue tend to be brown or black in appearance, so the man’s green tongue was unusual. But he did have several known risk factors for the condition, such as being older, recently using antimicrobials, and being a smoker. He had no other possibly related or more serious symptoms, though, such as a loss of taste or nearby pain. And hairy tongue in general isn’t a big deal and can be treated relatively easily.
In this case, the doctors advised him to gently scrub his tongue with a toothbrush four times a day and to consider quitting smoking. Though he remained a smoker at his follow-up visit six months later, his tongue was no longer green, the authors wrote.