How prevalent is myeloma in the US?

How prevalent is myeloma in the US?

First, the incidence, 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, 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 results, Group or Sears 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 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 available treatment, 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.

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