Patient-Centric Myeloma Research at ASH 2024: Quality of Life, Exercise, Nutrition & More

In my overview of ASH and the five key areas of research in multiple myeloma, I identified number five as being patient-centric research. Let's dive into that a little bit more. To learn more about the other areas that we're exploring from ASH, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and you can learn about the other four areas that I highlight.

What do I mean by patient-centric? Shouldn't all research be focused on patients? Absolutely, all research should be focused on patients, but there are studies that really further evaluate the quality of life of our patients, the experience that they have. Because we're here, of course, not to just treat myeloma, we treat people, and that's absolutely important to us. And I was fascinated at the prominence of the research that was really focused in these areas.

Let me highlight a few for you. Number one, we had a study that looked at exercise in multiple myeloma. You may have seen some videos before where we've talked about exercise and the importance of it. And this study looked at strength training and how it can improve the quality of life of our patients with multiple myeloma. There was another study that looked at diet and nutrition. We all wanna find ways to eat better and to have a greater impact in our life through our nutrition.

And this was a study that looked at a specific kind of nutritional intervention that could even potentially delay the progression of multiple myeloma. Still a little early, still a little preliminary, but really fascinating to study that kind of research and the impact it could have on our patients. Thirdly, there was a study called Lovesick that was presented by our friends from the Ohio State University. And here they evaluated the interplay between a patient and their partner when that patient was going through autologous stem cell transplant. We know that myeloma doesn't just affect the patient, it affects their whole dynamic, their whole community, their family and those that surround them. And studying that and understanding that so we can give the best experience possible is absolutely critical.

And lastly, there's a fascinating study looking at the need of all the testing that we do in multiple myeloma. You know, sometimes I say myeloma is like a crime scene. There isn't one piece of evidence that tells you the whole story. Often we have to do x-rays and blood work and urine testing and different kinds of blood tests. But this study was evaluating the importance of that urine testing, the 24-hour urine collections that patients often have to do that really takes a lot of their time and frankly takes up space in their fridge. And so, could we obviate the need of that? Could we give that up? And it was really interesting to see that really only about 1% of the time do we really need those urine tests.

And I think in the future, it'll help us determine when we can eliminate the need of those tests. And there was so much more. It encourages me as a myeloma doctor to know that we're not just thinking about survival curves, that we're thinking about the experience of our patients throughout. If you're interested in learning more about myeloma research at ASH, please subscribe to our YouTube channel where I dive into these five areas and where we provide updates on a regular basis of all the things that are happening in multiple myeloma. You can always find them at myeloma.org.