ALBERT

Description: Background: The clinical presentation of multiple myeloma (MM) varies greatly but often includes bone pain, anemia, renal dysfunction, hypercalcaemia, and/or constitutional symptoms. There are no signs or symptoms that are disease specific. The earliest staging system for MM, the Durie-Salmon (DS), associated disease and symptom burden with prognosis; however, it has been largely replaced by the International Staging System (ISS), which is easier to compute and better identifies patients with the poorest prognosis. It is unclear if ISS stage, like DS, is associated with disease or symptom burden. Objective: To compare disease and symptom burden of patients with newly diagnosed MM by ISS Stage. Methods: Data was extracted from the open-access Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) Researcher Gateway corresponding with interim analysis 6 from the CoMMpass study. The CoMMpass study is enrolling 1000 newly diagnosed MM patients who will be tracked longitudinally for 5 years. CoMMpass collects relevant clinical data and patient reported quality of life (EORTC QLQ-C30 and QLQ-MY20), as well as sequential tissue samples. Eligibility requirements for CoMMpass include: symptomatic MM with measureable disease by SPEP (≥1.0g/dL), UPEP (≥200mg/24 hours), or SFLC (≥10mg/dL); receiving an immunomodulator and/or a proteasome inhibitor for initial MM treatment; and no prior malignancies in the past 5 years. All clinical data was reported by trained data analysts at the enrolling center with the exception of flow cytometry which was performed centrally; raw lab values for beta-2 microglobulin and albumin were entered and stage was subsequently calculated by the analysts for this study according to the ISS (Greipp et al, JCO 2005). Twenty-six patients with unknown ISS were excluded from the analysis. Data was analyzed using SPSS 21. Categorical variables were compared using χ2, continuous with one-way ANOVA tests. Results: 599 patients were eligible for analysis. Sex, race, and heavy and light chain isotypes were all evenly distributed among the ISS stages; however, median age for ISS stage III was 67, 65 for stage II and 62 for stage I (p