Why is it important for a myeloma patient to be aware of the symptoms of amyloidosis?

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Why is it important for a myeloma patient to be aware of the symptoms of amyloidosis and be diagnosed appropriately?

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there's a sister disease to multiple myeloma called AL amyloidosis.

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And what this disease amounts to is the abnormal myeloma proteins are called para proteins. Sometimes patients refer to them as their m spike or their light chains. When these abnormal antibodies that all myeloma patients have misfold into this waxy material called amyloid, that amyloid can affect different body organs, specifically the heart and the kidneys, sometimes the tongue, the nervous system.

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So patients that are that have their myeloma for some period of time, they start to develop symptoms of amyloidosis. And it can take time for them and their doctors to sort that out on the patient's side. Shortness of breath, a thickened heart, additional protein wasting in the kidney weight loss. These are some kind of general symptoms that might call attention to the fact that a myeloma patient may also be developing amyloidosis.

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The treatment of the amyloidosis is to get the myeloma under better control because with the myeloma controlled, the abnormal antibodies are not floating around in circulation and no new amyloid can form. However, it is still critical to make this diagnosis for several reasons. Sometimes patients with concurrent amyloidosis don't tolerate the myeloma medicines the same as a standard myeloma patient.

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So we would want to know that. Alternatively, sometimes in myeloma, we accept a low abnormal protein. In the blood. We say your myeloma is mostly controlled. That's fine. We don't need to do better. However, if that small amount of abnormal protein is forming this amyloid material, which is making a person sick, that refocuses us and says, No, we need to do better.

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We need the myeloma even under better control than it has been, because you have this related problem called amyloidosis.

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