The Neuroimmunology of Cancer: Paraneoplastic Syndromes and Primary CNS Lymphoma

Abstract

Cancer represents a major, prolonged immunological disruption similar to that of infection. This chapter does not address the relatively common clinical scenarios of either primary cancers of the brain, which usually are tumors of the glial lineage, or of systemic malignancies that metastasize to the brain, such as lung or breast cancers; a discussion of these processes is beyond the scope of this book. Instead, this chapter primarily reviews the much rarer paraneoplastic syndromes, neurological involvement associated with immunological alterations caused by a distant tumor. This chapter also briefly summarizes primary CNS lymphoma since this malignancy can mimic neuroinflammatory disease.