How has your week been, myeloma world?

Summer definitely is here at Myeloma Morning Headquarters. We had temper­a­tures yesterday and today that rival those normally seen in early August.

We're not exactly sure how we feel about this devel­op­ment.

As for myeloma-related news, we have a lot of ground to cover.

We have one new myeloma research study that we summarize at length. It's about a difficult subject, namely, the impact of early relapse on the over­all survival of multiple myeloma patients. It's a difficult subject be­cause, not surprisingly, early re­lapse con­tinues …

The results of a recent Japanese study suggest that a vincristine-doxorubicin-dexamethasone regimen without intermittent high-dose dexamethasone reduces the risk of bacterial infection in multiple myeloma patients without affecting the treatment’s efficacy. 

Based on these findings, the study authors recommended avoiding the administration of intermittent high-dose dexamethasone with the vincristine-doxorubicin-dexamethasone regimen in myeloma patients at high risk for infection. 

The combination treatment of vincristine (Oncovin), doxorubicin (Adriamycin), and dexamethasone (Decadron) plus high-dose pulses of dexamethasone (referred to as VAD-HD) was first approved as a treatment for advanced multiple myeloma.

It …