[Beacon Staff]

Weekly Poll - Gender And Multiple Myeloma

by Beacon Staff on Wed May 09, 2012 10:07 am

This week's poll is about the gender distribution of multiple myeloma patients.

A few clarifications:

First, this question is only for readers who have multiple myeloma (active or symptomatic, not smoldering myeloma or MGUS).

Second, if you are a caregiver or family member of someone who has myeloma, feel free to answer on their behalf

As always, feel free to post comments, thoughts, or feedback in the space below. They can be very useful to other readers.

[uttter9319]

Re: Weekly Poll - Gender And Multiple Myeloma

by uttter9319 on Tue May 15, 2012 5:27 pm

I thought Multiple Myeloma was predominately a disease suffered by men not women... looks like that may be changing.

[DanniiB]

Re: Weekly Poll - Gender And Multiple Myeloma

by DanniiB on Wed May 16, 2012 2:48 pm

I think we need to be careful when we do these polls to draw any conclusions... you need to see that this here is not a representative research Many of the older Myeloma patients simply don't go on the internet and , this poll just shows how many female vs. male Myeloma patients are on this forum here and took the poll. There was another poll recently and there were very many young Myeloma patients , but simply because they just use the internet more then the older Myeloma patients in their 50-100 I enjoy these polls here... but they are not representative to the big picture

[Ricardo]

Re: Weekly Poll - Gender And Multiple Myeloma

by Ricardo on Wed May 16, 2012 3:33 pm

DanniB's point is correct, of course. This poll and the rest of the ones here are not surveys of each and every myeloma patient. They reflect the experiences and opinions of the Beacon's reader. Since this is an internet site, there will be more responses from myeloma patients who are regular internet users, like DanniB explains.

There are statistics about myeloma patients available from the National Cancer Institute's SEER database. Here is the link:

http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/mulmy.html

The statistics do show that men are more likely than women to get multiple myeloma, as utter9319 mentions.

That makes me wonder. I thought the usual stereotype is that the men are more comfortable using computers than women. If that's true, and if men are more likely to get myeloma than women, then why does this survey show an almost equal number of men and women among this site's readers?

Does it mean that women myeloma patients are more likely than male myeloma patients to go online and regularly read information about their disease?

Or are female myeloma patients more likely than male myeloma patients to participate in polls like this?

I think these are very interesting questions!

I do want to say that I really appreciate the Beacon doing these polls. I look forward to them, even if they aren't "perfect".