CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – The patient, who was only identified as a man in his 50s, was diagnosed with foreign accent syndrome (FAS) after receiving androgen deprivation therapy and being prescribed abiraterone acetate/prednisone.
The man had lived in England in his 20s and had friends and distant family members from Ireland but had never previously spoken with a foreign accent.
The report, jointly studied by Duke University in North Carolina and the Carolina Urologic Research Center in South Carolina, said that the patient’s accent was uncontrollable, present in all settings, and gradually became persistent 20 months into his treatment.
This is the first case of FAS described in a patient with prostate cancer and the third described in a patient with malignancy.
The researchers suspect that the voice change was caused by a condition called paraneoplastic neurological disorder (PND), which occurs when cancer patients’ immune systems attack parts of their brain, as well as muscles, nerves, and spinal cord.
Despite chemotherapy, the man’s neuroendocrine prostate cancer progressed resulting in multifocal brain metastases and a likely paraneoplastic ascending paralysis leading to his death. An MRI taken at symptom onset did not display brain abnormalities, and the man did not have any neurological examination abnormalities or psychiatric history.
Several similar cases of foreign accent syndrome have been recorded globally in recent years. The case of the North Carolina man, who had no immediate family from Ireland, highlights the mind-bending effects of foreign accent syndrome and the need for further research in the field.