"Common Chromosomal Abnormalities Occur Less Often In African-American Than White Multiple Myeloma Patients," The Myeloma Beacon, March 10, 2015
If you haven't seen the article already, I recommend it as a good review not just of racial disparities in multiple myeloma, but also of concepts related to chromosomal abnormalities in the disease.
Please note, as well, that the full text of the journal article that the Beacon's article is based on is available free of charge, and it is well written and not very difficult to understand.
In fact, there is a paragraph at the beginning of the article that gives a very helpful, top-level view of chromosomal abnormalities in multiple myeloma. I've included it below, edited a bit to make it a tad easier to read:
Multiple myeloma has several primary cytogenetic subtypes that can be broadly divided into two groups:The most common IgH translocations include t(11;14), t(6;14), t(4;14), t(14;16) and t(14;20); the latter three are generally associated with more adverse prognosis.
- Translocations involving the immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) locus on 14q32, and
- Trisomies of odd-numbered chromosomes (referred to as trisomic or hyperdiploid multiple myeloma).
In addition to the primary cytogenetic abnormalities discussed above, there are additional abnormalities that have been associated with multiple myeloma that can be seen either from the onset of the disease such – as monosomy 13 / del13q – or mainly with disease progression, such as del17p.
Unlike primary cytogenetic abnormalities that are typically non-overlapping, these secondary changes are overlapping, in the sense that they can be seen in combination with any of the primary cytogenetic subtypes.
Source: AJ Greenberg et al, "Racial differences in primary cytogenetic abnormalities in multiple myeloma: a multi-center study," Blood Cancer Journal, 2015 (link to full text).
