Abstract
A small proportion of patients with multiple myeloma (MM) are diagnosed at a very young age. The clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis of these patients are not well known. This analysis included 52 patients diagnosed with MM at the age of ≤30 years (range: 8–30 years). 68% of patients had International Scoring System (ISS) 1 MM; 22% presented with the light chain-only disease, and 48% with elevated serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). 85% of patients were treated with novel agents, and 62% received front-line autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT). Overall response rate (ORR) to front-line treatment and ASCT were 71% and 90%, respectively. The group was followed-up for the median period of 86 months. The median overall survival (OS) was 166 months (95% CI: 53–222), with 5-year OS rate of 77% (95% CI: 61.0–87.9). This findings suggest that the prognosis in young MM patients may be as good if not better than in the general population of MM patients.
Potential conflict of interest
Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10428194.2018.1480766.