In a new study, researchers found that an autoimmune disease appears to affect men with testicular cancer.
The research was conducted by a team from at Chan Zuckerberg (CZ) Biohub, Mayo Clinic and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
The disease causes severe neurological symptoms in men. It is called “testicular cancer-associated paraneoplastic encephalitis”.
The team found that men with the disease progressively lose control of their limbs, eye movements, and, in some cases, speech.
It begins with a testicular tumor, which appears to cause the immune system to attack the brain.
Patients often find themselves misdiagnosed or undiagnosed, and appropriate treatment is delayed.
In the study, the team found a highly specific and unique biomarker for the disease.
They improved the “programmable phage display” technology the can screen more than 700,000 autoantibody targets across all human proteins.
They examined cerebrospinal fluid from a 37-year-old man who had a history of testicular cancer and debilitating neurological symptoms, such as vertigo, imbalance and slurred speech.
The enhanced technology identified autoantibodies targeting Kelch-like protein 11 (KLHL11), which is found in the testes and parts of the brain.
The team believed this was the cause of the disease. The results were validated with other patient samples from the Mayo Clinic.
In an epidemiological assessment included in the study, the prevalence of KLHL11 encephalitis in Olmsted County, Minnesota, home to Mayo Clinic’s Rochester campus, was nearly 3 per 100,000 men.
Thus, KLHL11 is one of the more common autoimmune encephalitis biomarkers found in Olmsted County, and likely elsewhere in the U.S. and beyond.
The findings also point the way to using this protein biomarker as a diagnostic test for men with testicular cancer-associated paraneoplastic encephalitis.
One author of the study is Sean Pittock, M.D., a Mayo Clinic neurologist.
The study is published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
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