A rare form of prostate cancer has caused one man to suddenly speak with an accent very similar to an Irish accent. This drastic change stayed with him for the rest of his life.
There are only two other reports of cancer causing foreign accent syndrome (FAS) in the medical literature. This is the first case specifically linked to prostate cancer.
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SIA is a rare speech disorder that can cause a person to have a sudden “foreign” accent for no known reason, causing the pronunciation to change in a way that resembles – at least superficially – the intonation of another dialect or language.
The syndrome is most often associated with strokes or head injuries. For example, the most famous case was the case of a Norwegian woman who was wounded in the head during the bombing of Oslo in 1941. A few months later, she began to speak with an accent that resembled a German accent.
A more recent example was in the news just a few years ago when an Arizona woman sounded like “Mary Poppins” when she literally woke up. In his case, the reason was unclear.
Much less common cases are unequivocally associated with any tumor. In fact, there are only two other examples in the literature.
According to a study published in 2008, a woman in her 60s began speaking with a different, vague accent after breast cancer had spread to her brain.
In a similar situation, an Italian woman in her 50s with a brain tumor suddenly began to speak with a different rhythm and melody.
Despite the interest in stories in which people suddenly have a certain foreign accent, in most cases FAS are general changes in speech production that cannot be easily attributed to any particular geographic region.
A recent case of a US man diagnosed with prostate cancer is a rare example of a voice change that closely resembles a recognizable accent. He was apparently not of Irish descent and had never been to Ireland. But just 20 months after she was diagnosed with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, she began speaking with a southern Irish accent.
Unlike previous case reports, this patient did not have prominent brain tumors at baseline, but some did appear as the disease progressed.
Given the timing, doctors suspect that the patient’s SIA is the result of a rare paraneoplastic neurologic disorder (PND). PND occurs when cancer outside the brain triggers an immune response that can remotely affect the nervous system.
Despite chemotherapy and radiation, the patient’s cancer continued to progress rapidly, gradually paralyzing his body and, unfortunately, eventually leading to death. The man kept his Irish accent to the end.
“This outstanding presentation highlights the importance of additional literature on prostate cancer-associated SIA and PND to improve understanding of the relationship between these rare syndromes and clinical course,” the authors of the case review write.
Previously Focus He wrote about how you can starve a cancerous tumor. Recent research shows that arginine is an essential nutrient for cancer cells. And their lack can potentially make tumors more vulnerable to the body’s natural immune response.
Source: Focus
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