A North Carolina man developed an “uncontrollable Irish accent” after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, researchers said in January.
A case report published by BMJ claimed that the man in his 50s developed foreign accent syndrome (FAS) after receiving androgen deprivation therapy and abiraterone acetate/prednisone for his diagnosis of metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer. Neurological examinations showed no abnormalities, and he has no psychiatric history.
The man also doesn’t have any immediate family from Ireland, nor has he ever visited the nation, BBC reported. The accent remained with him until his death. He did apparently live in England when he was in his 20s, and has friends and distant family members from Ireland, but he had never spoken with the accent.
A US man developed an uncontrollable Irish accent after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, despite having never visited Ireland. The North Carolina man, who was in his 50s, was presumably afflicted with foreign accent syndrome (FAS)https://t.co/JCGk0o2d1X
— Alfons López Tena 🦇 (@alfonslopeztena) February 17, 2023
“His accent was uncontrollable, present in all settings and gradually became persistent,” the study authors said, noting that the accent started some 20 months into his treatment. The authors said they believe the FAS was caused by paraneoplastic neurological disorder (PND). PND occurs when cancer patients’ immune system attacks their brains, muscles, nerves, and spinal chord, BBC noted. (RELATED: Liam Neeson Rips Apart Conor McGregor, Who Is Having None Of It)
The case was studied by researchers at Duke University in North Carolina and the Carolina Urologic Research Center in South Carolina, BBC continued. “To our knowledge, 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 said. People who’ve suffered from FAS describe the sensation of hearing a “stranger in the house” whenever they speak, BBC noted in another article.