Results of a recent retrospective study conducted at the Mayo Clinic in­di­cate that the survival of patients with non­se­cre­tory multiple myeloma has improved over the last decade.

Nonse­cre­tory multiple myeloma is a rare form of myeloma in which a patient’s disease cannot be diagnosed or tracked by the presence of monoclonal protein in the blood or urine.  This is not the case for most myeloma patients, who have “se­cre­tory” disease which can be tracked using lab results such as a patient’s “M-spike” or free light chain levels.

The authors of the new …

A type of test called the free light chain assay can frequently detect oligo­secretory disease in multiple myeloma patients. The findings, discussed in a letter to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, also indicate that oligosecretory myeloma is more prevalent at later stages of the disease.

Oligosecretory myeloma, along with nonsecretory myeloma, is a subset of multiple myeloma. Nonsecretory myeloma patients have no measure­able levels of monoclonal (M) protein in their urine or blood. Similarly, oligosecretory myeloma patients have very low M-protein levels, also known as the M-spike, in …

Nonsecretory myeloma is a topic shrouded in apprehension and mystery.

Patients with nonsecretory myeloma have a host of questions.  How do I track the progress of my disease? Should nonsecretory myeloma be treated differently than “standard” myeloma?  Is my prognosis different because I am nonsecretory?

Among myeloma patients with secretory disease, nonsecretory myeloma is something they often have heard of, but they are not always sure what it is, or whether it is really relevant to them.

Given the many questions and concerns related to nonsecretory myeloma, I thought I would devote …

A recent European study reported poorer overall survival in patients with rare IgD, IgE, and IgM multiple myelomas following stem cell transplantation compared to patients with the more common IgG, IgA, or light chain myelomas. However, the overall survival of nonsecretory myeloma patients, another rare type of myeloma, was similar to that of common myeloma patients.

The authors added that the survival data from their analysis is better than previous data for patients with rare myelomas who received a stem cell transplant. They therefore recommended the continued use of transplantation as a …

Scientists have recently developed an assay to diagnose and monitor patients with low levels of immunoglobulin, including multiple myeloma patients. Immunoglobulin is a marker commonly used to diagnose and follow the progression of multiple myeloma. This new assay, which can detect low levels of serum immunoglobulin, is known as a free light chain (FLC) assay.

Measurements of immunoglobulin levels are often determined through several types of electrophoresis tests. While these techniques are sufficient for most patients, they are inadequate for more than 3% of patients with nonsecretory or light chain myeloma, …