Socioeconomic status is independently associated with overall survival in patients with multiple myeloma

Abstract

Population-based studies suggest that black patients with multiple myeloma (MM) have a higher mortality rate than white patients. However, other studies suggest that this disparity is related to socioeconomic status (SES) rather than race. To provide clarity on this topic, we reviewed 562 patients diagnosed with MM at our institution. Patients with high SES had a median overall survival (OS) of 62.8 months (95% confidence interval [CI] 43.1–82.6 months), compared to 53.7 months (45.2–62.3 months) and 48.6 months (40.4–56.8 months) for middle and low SES, respectively (p = 0.015). After controlling for race, age, year of diagnosis, severity of comorbidities, stem cell transplant utilization and insurance provider, patients with low SES had a 54% increase in mortality rate relative to patients with high SES. To support our findings, we performed a similar analysis of 45,505 patients with MM from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results-18 (SEER) database. Low SES is independently associated with poorer OS in MM.

Keywords::

• Multiple myeloma
• cancer health disparities
• socioeconomic status
• race

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at WUSM and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.

Potential conflict of interest

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at www.informahealthcare.com/lal.

The Siteman Cancer Center is supported in part by a NCI Cancer Center Support Grant, #P30 CA91842.

Dr. Tanya M. Wildes’ research is supported by Grant Number KM1CA156708 and K12CA167540 through the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Grant Number UL1 TR000448 through the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institutes of Health. Article contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official view of NCI, NCATS or NIH.