March 2 (UPI) — People with lymphoma and blood cancers, as well as those who have lung, prostate or breast cancer, may be at higher risk for having new onset Guillain-Barré syndrome, a study published Wednesday by the journal Neurology found.
In the study, which included more than 25,000 participants, among those who had Guillain-Barrém, 2% had a recent cancer diagnosis, the data showed.
In comparison, among participants who did not have Guillain-Barré, fewer than half as many had a recent cancer diagnosis, the researchers said.
Based on these figures, people recently diagnosed with cancer had a more than three-fold higher risk for developing Guillain-Barré than people without cancer, researchers estimated.
“While our study suggests that people with cancer have a greater risk of developing Guillain-Barré syndrome, it is important that people with cancer know the overall risk of developing Guillain-Barré is still very small,” study co-author Dr. Lotte Sahin Levison said in a press release.
“Our results suggest that yet unidentified factors present in several types of cancer may contribute to this increased risk,” said Levison, an epidemiologist at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark.
Guillain-Barré syndrome is a rare neurologic disorder in which the immune system attacks nerve cells in the body in error, causing rapid-onset muscle weakness, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Symptoms typically start with weakness and tingling in the feet and legs, which spread to the upper body and arms and may progress to paralysis, the NIH says.
Although it can be life-threatening, most people recover with few remaining problems, it says.
The cause of Guillain-Barré syndrome remains unknown, but it has been linked with gastrointestinal or respiratory infections, as well as some cancers, previous research suggests.
For this study, Levison and her colleagues identified 2,414 Danish adults who were diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome over a 30-year period.
For each person diagnosed with the disease, they also identified 10 people without it who were matched for age and gender, for a total of about 24,000 participants, they said.
They then separated out participants who had a recent cancer diagnosis, focusing on those with the disease up to six months before or two months after they developed Guillain-Barré.
Of the people who had Guillain-Barré, 49 people, or 2%, had a recent cancer diagnosis, the data showed.
Among those who did not have Guillain-Barré, 138 people, or 0.6%, had a recent cancer diagnosis, the researchers said.
People with cancers such as lymphomas had a seven-fold higher risk for Guillain-Barré, while those with lung or prostate cancer had a nearly six-fold higher risk, according to the researchers.
Those with breast cancer were five times more likely to develop Guillain-Barré, they said.
“While a majority of Guillain-Barré syndrome cases develop after an infection, there are still many cases that do not,” Levison said.
“Previous studies have suggested there may be a link between cancer and Guillain-Barré syndrome, but just how often people develop Guillain-Barré after a cancer diagnosis has not been well-studied,” she said.