Articles tagged with: Survival
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Results of a recent British study indicate that the relative importance of factors affecting survival in multiple myeloma patients changes with patient age.
In particular, the researchers found that the older a patient is at diagnosis, the more their survival is affected by their general health and by how advanced their multiple myeloma is at diagnosis.
In contrast, the impact of high-risk chromosomal abnormalities on survival decreases with patient age.
The study findings are based on an analysis of data for almost 4,000 newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients who participated in the …
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Results of a recent retrospective study show that radiation therapy shortly before, or shortly after, the start of drug-based treatment in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients is associated with lower overall survival.
The results are based on information for 78,095 multiple myeloma patients from the United States whose data were reported to the National Cancer Data Base between 2004 and 2015.
For their retrospective analysis, the authors of the new study divided the 78,095 patients in their sample into two groups.
One group included the patients who were found to have undergone …
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Results of a retrospective study conducted at the Mayo Clinic indicate that multiple myeloma patients who respond more gradually to their initial treatment may have better overall survival.
Specifically, the authors of the new study find that newly diagnosed patients who required more than 120 days to achieve their best response to initial treatment had better progression-free and overall survival than patients who achieved their best response in 120 days or less.
The five-year survival rate was 77 percent for patients who achieved their best response to initial treatment in more than …
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Updated multiple myeloma survival statistics for the United States were made public yesterday. The new data show little change in five-year survival compared to statistics released last year. This short-term plateau in myeloma survival stands in contrast to the sizable increases in survival seen in last year's update and the one in 2016.
The newly released statistics also show little change in how survival varies across myeloma patients based on their age, race, or gender. Age continues to have a significant effect on survival chances, with younger patients experiencing much higher …
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Hello, myeloma world. It's too late to wish you a good morning, but we do hope you had a nice day.
We were right on the mark yesterday when we worried about a “tidal wave” of new myeloma-related research hitting sometime soon. The wave has hit. Today's list of new research studies – see the bottom of this article – may be longer than it's ever been.
Processing that list has taken quite a bit of time, and we won't even try to cover all of the studies in today's report. Instead, …
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Results of a recent Greek study indicate that levels of a multiple myeloma patient’s “uninvolved” immunoglobulins at the time of diagnosis may have an impact on the patient’s prognosis.
The human body produces a variety of different immunoglobulins, which are proteins used by the body to fight infections. In healthy people, the blood levels of the different immunoglobulins fall within certain known ranges.
Multiple myeloma patients, however, typically overproduce one type of immunoglobulin, also called the monoclonal (M)-protein, which is found at higher-than-normal levels in a myeloma patients' blood.
The immunoglobulins that …
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In a recent study conducted in Korea, investigators found that myeloma patients who had higher weights at diagnosis had the longest survival.
Patients who were underweight at diagnosis, on the other hand, had the lowest survival.
The results of the Korean study are similar to those reported by a recent study that examined weight at diagnosis and its impact on survival in U.S. veterans diagnosed with myeloma (see related Beacon news).
In the Korean study, investigators retrospectively analyzed data for 193 myeloma patients who were diagnosed from 1998 to 2012 at a single treatment center. For each patient, the researchers had data that allowed them to calculate the patient's body mass index (BMI) at the time of diagnosis.
BMI is a measure of how overweight, or underweight, a person is. It is calculated based on a person’s height and weight.
The researchers divided the patients in the study into three groups based on their BMI at diagnosis. The first group was patients who were underweight (BMI below 20 kg/m2). The second group was patients who had a healthy weight (BMI of 20 kg/m2 to 24.9 kg/m2). The third group was patients who were overweight (BMI of 25 kg/m2 or above).
Median survival for the patients in the three groups increased as weight at diagnosis increased.
In particular, median survival was 26 months for patients who were underweight, 57 months for patients with a healthy weight, and 76 months for patients who were overweight at diagnosis.
The researchers also found that patients in the study who were underweight at the time of diagnosis had lower hemoglobin levels, higher calcium levels in their blood, and higher rates of kidney failure at diagnosis than the patients in the other two weight categories.
However, even when the researchers controlled for factors such as patient age, disease stage, type of initial treatment, and response to initial treatment, they still found that being underweight at diagnosis had a statistically significant negative impact on a patient's likelihood of survival.
For more information, please refer to the study in the Annals of Hematology (abstract).
