What percentage of myeloma patients develop bone disease? Almost all patients develop a form of multiple myeloma bone disease. That means they either have lytic lesions or they have a bone loss. When you go and take studies from 10 years ago, at a time we did not really start to treat patients very early. We started to treat patients when they had grep criteria. That means hypocalcemia, renal failure, anemia or bone disease. At that time we saw that around 60% of the patients had lytic lesions. Lytic lesion is, and I mentioned that already, a hole in your bone. What we see right now with the start of the treatment of patients earlier and earlier, sometimes we already treat small ring multiple myeloma. We see less bone disease. But nevertheless, we know that multiple myeloma cells activate osteoclasts, the bone eating cells and resolve bone. So we know that each patient has a form of bone loss. That's why we think that almost 100% of the patients are affected by the multiple myeloma in terms of developing bone disease, either in form of a lytic lesion or a general bone loss. About 90% of myeloma patients will develop myeloma bone disease at some point in their disease course. It's very helpful to know if a patient has ever developed myeloma bone disease because that tells you whether you need to expose them to Zometa or Xjiva at the time that the disease is out of control. And if they've never had evidence of myeloma bone disease, these drugs are not helpful.
HealthTree • April 30, 2020
