A possible link has been discovered between certain cancers and the rare neurologic disorder Guillain-Barre syndrome.
Dr Lotte Sahin Levison of Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, and colleagues analysed information on 2,414 people with Guillain-Barre syndrome from Danish national registries over a 30 year period.
Each patient’s outcomes were compared against ten similar people without the disease.
Among those with Guillain-Barre syndrome, 2% had a recent cancer diagnosis, compared to 0.6% of those without. The risk remained higher once surgery, infections and other health problems were taken into account.
Specifically, those with lymphoma had a seven times greater risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, lung or prostate cancer were linked to a five and a half times greater risk, and breast cancer was associated with a five times higher risk.
Details appear today in Neurology. The exact cause of Guillain-Barre syndrome is unknown, but it has also been seen after gastrointestinal or respiratory infections.
Dr Levison said: “While a majority of Guillain-Barre syndrome cases develop after an infection, there are still many cases that do not.
“Previous studies have suggested there may be a link between cancer and Guillain-Barre syndrome, but just how often people develop Guillain-Barre after a cancer diagnosis has not been well-studied.
“While our study suggests that people with cancer have a greater risk of developing Guillain-Barre syndrome, it is important that people with cancer know the overall risk of developing Guillain-Barre is still very small.”
She concludes: “More research is now needed. Our results suggest that yet unidentified factors present in several types of cancer may contribute to this increased risk.”
Levison, L. S. et al. Association Between Incident Cancer and Guillain-Barré Syndrome Development: A Nationwide Case-Control Study Neurology 2 March 2022
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