BETA What disparities exist in the incidence of myeloma?

So, incidence is a way that we measure how many patients have a certain disease. And the classic way we describe incidence is if you get 100,000 people, how many of those 100,000 people have myeloma or how many of those 100,000 people have breast cancer or colon cancer. And so, it's a good way when you get a group of people to say, well, how often does this occur? The incidence of myeloma in people of African descent, so around the entire planet, if you go to anywhere on the planet, there's a higher occurrence of myeloma per 100,000 than there are in Caucasian communities or Caucasian groups that are different than in Asian groups. And so, you look at the number per 100,000 of people of African descent. For men, it's about 16.6 per 100,000. For Caucasian men, it's more like 8 per 100,000. And you look at Asian men, it's even lower than, and men and women that are of Native American descent, it's even lower than that. So, multiple myeloma is a blood cancer, and this is actually a blood cancer that is two times more common in the African American population. In addition to that, the precursor condition, there's something called MGUS, or monoclonal gliomopathy of undetermined significance, which is also two to three times more likely to occur in African Americans than other populations. And what we find is patients who are African Americans are also diagnosed at a younger age. So, for myeloma, it's approximately five years younger. For the MGUS, which is a precursor condition, it can be anywhere between five to ten years younger that patients are diagnosed. And so, what that means is this is a type of disease, a type of cancer that affects the African American population more than others. And there is a lot of initiatives to get patients to centers like ours. African American initiative and disparity is a huge issue for IMF as well.