Articles tagged with: Survival
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Hello, myeloma world. It's too late to wish you a good morning, but we do hope you had a nice day.
We were right on the mark yesterday when we worried about a “tidal wave” of new myeloma-related research hitting sometime soon. The wave has hit. Today's list of new research studies – see the bottom of this article – may be longer than it's ever been.
Processing that list has taken quite a bit of time, and we won't even try to cover all of the studies in today's report. Instead, …
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A recently published study may change the goals many myeloma specialists use to make treatment decisions for newly diagnosed myeloma patients planning on having a stem cell transplant.
The study also has potentially broader implications. Indeed, it may influence ongoing debate on a fundamental controversy about how multiple myeloma, in general, should be treated.
The authors of the new study looked at data for 539 myeloma patients who failed to achieve even a partial response to their initial (induction) treatment regimen after diagnosis.
After their initial treatment failed, some of the 539 patients …
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Saturday was the official first day of the 2014 American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting. The day featured a wide range of interesting presentations about multiple myeloma.
Oral presentations about new treatments under development were given mid-day and were summarized in a Beacon ASH Daily Update published yesterday morning.
During Saturday evening, a poster session took place where important new research findings were summarized in posters displayed throughout two separate large conference halls.
The studies covered a variety of myeloma-related topics, ranging from new treatments being developed for myeloma, combination therapies …
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Results of a recent Greek study indicate that levels of a multiple myeloma patient’s “uninvolved” immunoglobulins at the time of diagnosis may have an impact on the patient’s prognosis.
The human body produces a variety of different immunoglobulins, which are proteins used by the body to fight infections. In healthy people, the blood levels of the different immunoglobulins fall within certain known ranges.
Multiple myeloma patients, however, typically overproduce one type of immunoglobulin, also called the monoclonal (M)-protein, which is found at higher-than-normal levels in a myeloma patients' blood.
The immunoglobulins that …
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Results from a recent study conducted at the Mayo Clinic suggest that the degree of complete response a multiple myeloma patient achieves following a stem cell transplant may affect their survival.
In particular, the Mayo researchers found that the five-year overall survival rate was nearly twice as high for patients who achieved a stringent complete response (80 percent), compared to those who achieved a complete response (53 percent) or near complete response (47 percent).
However, the researchers point out that the achievement of a stringent complete response is only one of many …
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In a recent study conducted in Korea, investigators found that myeloma patients who had higher weights at diagnosis had the longest survival.
Patients who were underweight at diagnosis, on the other hand, had the lowest survival.
The results of the Korean study are similar to those reported by a recent study that examined weight at diagnosis and its impact on survival in U.S. veterans diagnosed with myeloma (see related Beacon news).
In the Korean study, investigators retrospectively analyzed data for 193 myeloma patients who were diagnosed from 1998 to 2012 at a single treatment center. For each patient, the researchers had data that allowed them to calculate the patient's body mass index (BMI) at the time of diagnosis.
BMI is a measure of how overweight, or underweight, a person is. It is calculated based on a person’s height and weight.
The researchers divided the patients in the study into three groups based on their BMI at diagnosis. The first group was patients who were underweight (BMI below 20 kg/m2). The second group was patients who had a healthy weight (BMI of 20 kg/m2 to 24.9 kg/m2). The third group was patients who were overweight (BMI of 25 kg/m2 or above).
Median survival for the patients in the three groups increased as weight at diagnosis increased.
In particular, median survival was 26 months for patients who were underweight, 57 months for patients with a healthy weight, and 76 months for patients who were overweight at diagnosis.
The researchers also found that patients in the study who were underweight at the time of diagnosis had lower hemoglobin levels, higher calcium levels in their blood, and higher rates of kidney failure at diagnosis than the patients in the other two weight categories.
However, even when the researchers controlled for factors such as patient age, disease stage, type of initial treatment, and response to initial treatment, they still found that being underweight at diagnosis had a statistically significant negative impact on a patient's likelihood of survival.
For more information, please refer to the study in the Annals of Hematology (abstract).
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Findings from a recent retrospective study conducted by researchers at the Mayo Clinic show that overall survival for multiple myeloma patients treated at that cancer center has improved significantly between 2001 and 2010.
Patients diagnosed between 2001 and 2005 had a median overall survival of 4.6 years, while those diagnosed more recently – between 2006 and 2010 – had an improved median overall survival of 6.1 years, or almost one-third higher.
In addition, the share of patients dying within a year of diagnosis, known as early mortality, also decreased significantly during the 10-year time …
