Decoding Multiple Myeloma
What is Multiple Myeloma?
Multiple myeloma is cancer that is often not heard of, but it is helpful to know about. Multiple myeloma occurs in around 2% of all cancer cases in the United States, making it the 14th most common neoplasm. Even if it is a rare blood cancer, is essential to learn more about this illness and especially how to diagnose and treat it. This article will discuss an overview of what multiple myeloma is, its causes, symptoms and treatments for multiple myeloma.
Why Does Multiple Myeloma Happen?
The exact cause of multiple myeloma is still not known. However, certain risk factors have been studied that affect its occurrence. These risk factors include age, gender, positive family history, obesity and exposure to radiation or chemicals.
What are the Symptoms of Multiple Myeloma?
Multiple myeloma affects the bones, causing a variety of symptoms. These include bone pain, fatigue and weakness. Bone pain is usually experienced in the back, hips, ribs and skull. Bone symptoms occur due to bone loss because of the accumulation of cancer cells. There is also a risk for bone fractures to occur even from minor injuries.
Weak bones in the spine can affect the spinal nerves, causing numbness and weakness. Patients can also experience anemia (low red blood cell count) and other blood abnormalities due to a shortage of red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. Easy bruising or bleeding can also occur due to platelet dysfunction and a shortage of platelets.
Because plasma cells help the body fight off infection, a person with multiple myeloma will have recurrent infections and their immunity is compromised. Kidney damage happens with further progression of the disease as the myeloma protein can cause the kidneys to fail, leading to symptoms of renal failure. The onset of kidney failure can cause dehydration, electrolyte imbalance and swelling (edema) to occur.
How Do You Treat Multiple Myeloma?
Multiple myeloma treatment depends on the staging of the cancer. The goals of multiple myeloma treatment include stabilizing any acute symptoms and preventing the progression of the disease. It is also important to evaluate the renal function of the patient with multiple myeloma as the cancer cells significantly cause damage to the kidney. Any signs of spinal cord compression should be evaluated and addressed by specialists as well.
Treatments for Multiple Myeloma
Lifestyle Changes
In multiple myeloma treatment, lifestyle changes may not directly cure multiple myeloma but can improve overall health. Lifestyle changes include having regular exercise, eating a healthy diet and removing any vices such as smoking and drinking alcohol.
Getting enough sleep and rest is also important. These can help your body perform optimally and are safe and without any side effects. Aside from lifestyle changes, there are various options for multiple myeloma treatment. The American Cancer Society recommends various multiple myeloma treatment options. These include chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy and stem cell therapy.
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy involves using medications to kill cancer cells and abnormal plasma cells. This is usually done at the beginning of the treatment regimen, to decrease the number of cancer cells or the tumor burden. Examples of chemotherapeutic agents used in multiple myeloma include melphalan, doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide.
Chemotherapy is one of the effective ways to kill cancer cells. However, chemotherapy kills both cancer cells and healthy cells and because of that cause a lot of side effects. Side effects can include fatigue, nausea, hair loss and increased risk for infections.
Targeted Therapy
Targeted therapy is a type of treatment that targets specific proteins in the cancer cells. These proteins are usually on the outer surface of the cancer cell and help in the growth and survival of the cancer cells.
Targeted therapy treatment prevents tumors to grow by interfering with these proteins in the cancer cells. Targeted therapy is helpful because they only attack the cancer cells and can spare the healthy cells. This leads to fewer side effects compared to chemotherapy.
Radiation Therapy
Radiation therapy uses high-energy beams to kill cancer cells. Radiation therapy is done in areas of bone affected by cancer cells or when chemotherapy has not been successful. Like chemotherapy, radiation therapy is useful in killing cells. However, treatment is aggressive and can also affect healthy cells, leading to side effects.
Stem Cell Therapy
Stem cell therapy is when stem cells are obtained from the blood or bone marrow and transplanted, replacing the diseased bone marrow with healthy stem cells. Stem cells are healthy cells that have not developed yet and can become any kind of cell. When transplanted into a patient with multiple myeloma, the stem cells can become the new healthy blood cells in the patient’s body.
Stem cells can be retrieved from the patient or a donor. Compared to other therapies, this is one of the newer treatment options for multiple myeloma. Survival rates have improved since the introduction of stem cell therapy. However, side effects include infection and graft versus host disease. Patients undergo eligibility assessments as not everyone can undergo stem cell therapy.
If the patient with multiple myeloma is stable, multiple myeloma treatment depends on the person’s risk assessment and cell transplant eligibility. Different regimens are available using a combination of the different treatment options, but usually involve induction therapy with chemotherapeutic medications followed by peripheral blood stem cell mobilization and stem cell transplant.
When Should You Seek Consult?
If you experience multiple myeloma symptoms and have the risk factors, it is best to consult your physician. Multiple myeloma is not common cancer, but when detected and managed early, multiple myeloma treatment can be started sooner and can help improve the chances of a successful outcome.