Fortunately there are some good days when I can almost forget that I have multiple myeloma.  Then it somehow sneaks back into the picture in most curious of ways.

“Is it going to be hot today, Daddy?” eight year old Lizzie asked me.

“Yep, it’s going to be in the upper 90s – the mercury is rising!”

She gave me her patented ‘hunh?’ look to which I have become accustomed.

“Mercury is what, Daddy?”

“Mercury is rising. You know what …

Researchers recently reported updated sur­viv­al rates for multiple mye­lo­ma patients in the United States.  The results show that sur­viv­al has im­proved steadily – and markedly – from 1998 to 2009.

The average newly diagnosed myeloma patient 15 years ago, for exam­ple, was about one-third as likely as someone without myeloma to live another five years.

By the end of the 2000s, in contrast, that same myeloma patient would be 45 percent as likely as someone without myeloma to live another …

The summer of 2013 is too rapidly coming to an end. The blistering 95-degree days of July have faded away during the first few weeks of August into glorious days in a more temperate 80-degree range. Normally it’s in August when we on the U.S. east coast suffer the dog days of summer, but so far this August has been mild and we even had a few crisp nights. We of course have yet to see what late August and …

Findings from a recent study indicate that a newer method of determining kidney disease in multiple myeloma patients may be more accurate than traditional methods.

Researchers from Greece found that when they used the newer method, which tests for a protein known as cystatin-C, they were able to detect kidney damage in a higher percentage of newly diagnosed multiple mye­loma patients.

The investigators recommend that newer methods that include cystatin-C should be used instead of older methods, which rely only …

My multiple myeloma diagnosis in 2005 was a shock and a mystery.  I was 30 years old and healthy; I’d never even heard of this disease.  It seemed to appear out of the blue, against all odds. Where did this thing come from, and how did I get it? No doctor could tell me.

Six years later, a small piece of the puzzle fell into place, but not in a good way. My Aunt Margie – my dad’s only sibling …

Onyx Pharmaceuticals, the South San Francisco, California-based com­pany that developed and now mar­kets Kyprolis (car­filz­o­mib), announced yesterday eve­ning that it is being acquired by Amgen.

Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN), which is based outside of Los Angeles, is the world’s largest bio­tech com­pany.

Within the multiple myeloma community, Amgen is known most for its anemia medications – Aranesp (darbe­poetin alfa) and Epogen (epoetin alfa, also mar­keted as Procrit and Eprex) – as well as its drugs that in­crease the body’s pro­duc­tion …

Results from a recent study suggest that multiple myeloma patients whose monoclonal (M) protein levels continue to decrease after 100 days following stem cell trans­planta­tion may experience improved survival.

Both progression-free survival and overall survival were longer in patients who showed such a continued response without additional therapy after autologous stem cell trans­planta­tion (using their own cells).

“This study confirms the observation that the depth of response continues to improve after trans­plant,” said the study’s lead investigator Dr. Shaji Kumar …