According to the BBC, a curious medical case is currently occupying US researchers. An American man developed an “uncontrollable Irish accent” after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. The man, who has since died, had never been to Ireland.
The patient from the US state of North Carolina probably suffered from Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS), the British Medical Journal suspected. The case was investigated jointly by Duke University in North Carolina and the Carolina Urologic Research Center in South Carolina.
“To our knowledge, this is the first case of FAS described in a patient with prostate cancer and the third to be described in a patient with malignancy,” the report said.
“His accent was uncontrollable, present in all environments, and gradually became intractable,” the researchers said. The accent did not set in quickly, but only about 20 months after the start of treatment. Even when the condition of the patient, who remained anonymous, deteriorated, the accent persisted until his death.
FAS is a well-known but still enigmatic phenomenon. It was found, for example, in people who suffered a heart attack or a blow to the head. FAS was first described in 1907 and there have been a few dozen cases since then.