Testicular Cancer Linked to Brain Dysfunctions

Scientists have discovered that testicular cancer can lead to brain damage, seizures, memory loss and dementia long before the cancer is even detected.

The brain damage apparently is caused by an overly aggressive attack by the body’s own immune system on a protein produced by tumors, the researchers said.

Doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York report that men with testicular cancer and damage to one of the brain’s emotional centers had a particular type of antibody in their blood long before the cancer was detected. That suggests that these antibodies could be used to give patients an early warning of testicular cancer.

Researchers think the biological double whammy occurs because a tumor sometimes creates a protein normally found only in the brain.

Since the immune system ordinarily doesn’t come across those proteins, it attacks them as invaders. But since the same protein is in the brain, the brain also is attacked.

The study appears in today’s New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Robert Darnell of Rockefeller University said these rare brain disorders could provide clues necessary to develop tumor vaccines and treatments for other degenerative brain diseases.