I recently had lunch with a group of fellow multiple myeloma patients, during which we touched on the problems we patients have had with memory and cognitive issues.

We all agreed that the treat­ments we have received seem to have affected our states of mind.

For me, that was particularly true after my stem cell trans­plant in January 2010. I was dealing with many aspects of "chemo brain" at the time. These problems included short-term memory loss, slower thinking, …

Once-weekly high-dose Kyprolis led to higher response rates and longer remissions in re­lapsed / refractory myeloma patients than twice-weekly, lower-dose Kyprolis (car­filz­o­mib), interim results of the Phase 3 "ARROW" clinical trial show.

Dr. Maria-Victoria Mateos presented the trial results earlier this month at the 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago, and also last weekend at the 2018 congress of the European Hematology Association, held in Stockholm. In addi­tion, the trial results were recently published in …

Back in April, I wrote about my adventures with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). I had run into a specious HIPAA barrier when the on­col­ogy practice I treat at initially refused to email me my laboratory results, saying HIPAA did not allow emails. Several readers shared comments about their own ex­peri­ences and a few expressed interest in the memo I presented to my oncologist addressing my HIPAA right.

Before I write and before you read another sentence …

In the midst of the annual late May / early June medical conference season, with the many presentations of results from large-scale clin­i­cal trials, it is perhaps refreshing to learn that small-scale research has uncovered a pre­vi­ously unexplored poten­tial myeloma ther­apy.

In particular, physicians in New Zealand have found signs that roxi­thro­mycin, an antibiotic first used more than 30 years ago, may have anti-myeloma activity. The physicians shared their finding in a case report pub­lished last month.

In their report, …

Updated re­­sults of a Phase 1 trial testing bb2121 in re­lapsed mul­ti­ple myeloma patients were pre­sented last Friday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting. bb2121 is a poten­tial new myeloma treat­ment in the chi­meric an­ti­gen re­cep­tor (CAR) T-cell class of ther­a­pies.

The re­­sults pre­sented at this year's ASCO meeting con­firm pre­vi­ous findings in­di­cating bb2121 has sub­stan­tial anti-myeloma ac­­tiv­ity.

At some of the higher doses of bb2121 tested during the trial, for example, nearly every patient treated …

I’m not sure if my husband Graham and I had any definite plans for how to spend our first year post retirement.

In the pre-myeloma days, I think we often talked about traveling more and spending more time together doing the things we love to do. My multiple myeloma diag­nosis turned everything upside down for a while. Our plans shifted to much more day-to-day things, such as doctor visits, man­agement of treat­ment side effects, and the hope of better health. …

This year’s American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting began last Friday and will run through tomorrow.

Multiple myeloma-related pre­sen­ta­tions have been taking place every day of the meeting. The main myeloma-related oral pre­sen­ta­tion session of the meeting, how­ever, took place on Friday. Research summarized during oral pre­sen­ta­tion sessions usually is par­tic­u­larly im­por­tant, either because the subject itself is im­por­tant, or because the results are based on sub­stan­tial amounts of evi­dence (for example, a sizable clin­i­cal trial).

Given the …