Despite having never been to Ireland, an american who was diagnosed with prostate cancer began to speak with a “uncontrollable Irish accent,” according to experts.
According to the British Medical Journal, the fifty-year-old man from North Carolina was likely suffering from foreign accent syndrome (FAS).
This unusual disease gave the guy, who had no Irish relatives, an Irish accent that lasted until his death.
In recent years, similar occurrences have been documented all across the world.
Both Duke University, located in North Carolina, and the Carolina Urologic Research Center, located in South Carolina, worked together to investigate and report on the case.
This is just the third reported instance of FAS in a patient with malignancy, but “the first in a patient with prostate cancer,” according to the authors of the article.
The story excluded the man’s name and nationality.
It says that when he was in his 20s, he lived in England and had Irish friends and distant relatives. Yet, they point out that he had never before talked with the foreign accent.
The researchers write in their paper that “his accent was uncontrollable, present in all settings and gradually became persistent,” noting that it initially appeared 20 months into his therapy.
The accent persisted even as his health deteriorated till his death months later.
When his symptoms first started, “he had no neurological examination abnormalities, psychiatric history, or abnormalities on MRI of the brain,” the report noted.
His neuroendocrine prostate cancer spread despite treatment, and his death was likely caused by paraneoplastic ascending paralysis or multiple metastases to the brain.
The researchers have a strong suspicion that a disease known as paraneoplastic neurological disorder (PND) was the root cause of the alteration in the subject’s voice.
PND develops when a cancer patient’s immune system attacks their muscles, nerves, and spinal cord in addition to certain areas of the brain.
Other people with FAS have told the BBC that it makes them feel uneasy to hear a “stranger in the house” every time they speak.
After having a stroke in 2006, UK resident Linda Walker noticed that her Geordie accent had been replaced with a voice with a Jamaican accent.
In 1941, a young Norwegian woman who had been hit by bomb shrapnel during a Second World War air raid developed a German accent. This was one of the first cases that was known about.
Locals ostracized her as a Nazi agent.
Image Credt: Getty