How common is MDS? Yeah, so MDS historically was not considered a discrete disorder until about in the 1990s. And since then, the data has been mounting about the incidence and prevalence. We know it's somewhere between 60,000 and 170,000 approximated in the United States per year. But really what we know more is that your incidence is increasing with age. So it's quite uncommon in patients under 40 years old. But it becomes much more common in patients above 60 where the incidence goes from between three to eight out of 100,000. And almost 50 out of 100,000 patients above the age of eight, they will have this. So it is a disease of aging for most populations. And the incidence increases as you get older. Myelodysplastic syndrome occurs in about four out of every 100,000 people in the United States. And that translates to about 20,000 people who have a new diagnosis of myelodysplastic syndrome each year. Now we think that that's probably an underestimate. There are a lot of people who are older, their blood counts start to drop, and their doctors sort of shrug their shoulders and say, well, your bone marrow is aging like the rest of you. And they never undergo a bone marrow biopsy to diagnose myelodysplastic syndrome. But if we look at statistics in the United States, about 20,000 people per year have a new diagnosis of myelodysplastic syndrome. Our best guess is that there are probably tens of thousands more people who are living with MDS who are in the United States.
HealthTree • February 26, 2026
