What is the incidence of myeloma in the US? How does it compare to other cancers? Other blood cancers How prevalent is myeloma in the US?

How prevalent is myeloma in the U.S.?

The incidence of any disease refers to the number of new cases per year defined over some population and the prevalence of any disease is the number of total cases in that same population.

So the incidence for myeloma in the United States is roughly about 35,000 to 36,000 per year, and that's been stable over a number of years.

The true prevalence of myeloma is a little bit unknown because of what is smoldering myeloma. Smoldering myeloma is underrecognized compared to active myeloma, which throws off some of these numbers. In general, we say myeloma is roughly 1 to 2% of all new cancer cases in the United States, and it has had an increasing incidence and prevalence gap, that is, people with myeloma who are diagnosed tend to be continuing to live longer. And we attribute that to really two things. One is the success of treatments, and two is the success of supportive care.

The gap between incidence and prevalence is a good feature to see in any disease. We saw something similar with CML, chronic myelogenous leukemia, where the incidence remains what it was, but the prevalence continues to rise as people live longer with it. And so by some estimates, multiple myeloma has actually become the second most common hematologic malignancy after the category of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. And that's simply, again, a credit to the treatment and the supportive care that's surrounding it.

First, the incidence, that is, how many people are diagnosed every year.

So blood cancers in general are less common than what we call solid tumors. So if we take all cancers in the United States, about 85% of those are solid organ cancers, meaning lung cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, and leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma are only about 15% of those.

Now, within those blood cancers, multiple myeloma is not that uncommon. It's about 15 to 20% of all blood cancers.

In terms of numbers, roughly based on the data from the surveillance and epidemiology and end result group, or SEER group, which is run by the National Cancer Institute, about 31,000 patients were diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2018. So it's a significant number. It is much less than, say, 250,000 to 260,000 who are diagnosed with either breast or lung cancer, but 30,000 to 31,000 patients is a pretty significant number for one disease.

So it's not an uncommon disease. And now with the available treatments, those patients are living longer.

So as a result, there are more patients living with myeloma. So in terms of prevalence, or how many people are living with multiple myeloma in the United States, the statistics were that last year there were roughly 125,000 people with multiple myeloma in the United States.