American cancer patient developed ‘uncontrollable’ Irish accent after diagnosis, experts say

What caused a rare speech disorder in a cancer patient? (Representational image)

An American cancer patient developed an "uncontrollable" Irish accent while in treatment, despite never having visited Ireland or having an Irish background, according to a paper published in the leading medical journal The BMJ.

The man, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer, showed symptoms consistent with Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS), the authors of the study said.

"He presented with an uncontrollable ‘Irish brogue’ accent. He had no neurological examination abnormalities, psychiatric history or MRI of the brain abnormalities at symptom onset," they added.

The patient, who later died of his ailment, belonged to North Carolina. He had lived in England in his 20s but was never reported to have spoken in a foreign accent.

The authors, experts from Duke University and the Carolina Urologic Research Center, said this was the first case of Foreign Accent Syndrome detected in a prostate cancer patient.

Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare speech disorder that occurs when there's damage to the brain part responsible for melody and rhythm of speech.

Most commonly, this damage happens because of a brain stroke. Other causes are brain tumours, bleeding in the brain, head injuries or progressive diseases like Multiple Sclerosis.

In the American patient's case, experts suspect the speech disorder was caused by paraneoplastic neurological disorder. This condition can occur alongside cancer as the body, while attempting to destroy a tumour, unintentionally attacks healthy tissue.

“Despite chemotherapy, his neuroendocrine prostate cancer progressed resulting in multifocal brain metastases and a likely paraneoplastic ascending paralysis leading to his death," the authors said.

At least two other cases of foreign accent syndrome have been reported in the previous decades.

One was of a woman whose Geordie accent changed to Jamaican after she had a stroke in 2006, the BBC reported.

In the second case, in 2010, a woman with a native west country accent found herself speaking with a Chinese intonation, according to The Guardian.