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Recently Diagnosed or Relapsed? Stop Looking For a Miracle Cure, and Use Evidence-Based Therapies To Enhance Your Treatment and Prolong Your Remission

Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.

Click the orange button to the right to learn more about what you can start doing today.

MRD- Predictor Long-Term Myeloma Survival!

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The assessment of minimal residual disease (MRD) … is established as a powerful predictor of long-term outcomes.”

Yes, according to research, multiple myeloma patients who achieve MRD often reach longer overall survival compared to MM patients who do not reach MRD.  What studies like the first and second ones linked below fail to report is that long-term outcomes do not take long-term or late stage side effects, powerful predictors of quality of life, into account.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I think long-term outcomes, that is to say MM survival beyond the stated 5-7 year averages, is an important goal. Often the main goal for relatively young newly diagnosed patients.

If you are a newly diagnosed MM patient, please try to think through HOW you achieve MRD status. In other words, if you achieve MRD or sCR status by aggressive, high-dose chemotherapy (say a double ASCT), then you drastically increase your risk of short, long-term and late stage side effects. Think about your life outlined in the bottom study linked below.

If however, you achieve MRD or sCR status by undergoing relatively little aggressive chemo, say by undergoing only 3-4 induction cycles (this can happen…really) then consider discontinuing your chemo and live as anti-MM a lifestyle as you can through-

  • Anti-MM nutrition
  • Anti-MM supplementation
  • Anti-MM lifestyle therapies such as whole-body hyperthermia, exercise, etc.

I occasionally read newly diagnosed MM patients post in Facebook groups that their oncologist has mentioned MM patients being…shall I say it…cured!

According to the second article below, the term “functional cure” is being used to describe MM survivors who live for more than 15 years.

Unfortunately, this length of life comes at a cost. The last study below talks about the serious long-term and late stage side effects experienced by mm patients who undergo high-dose aggressive chemotherapy and who survive for more than 15 years.

If you’d like to learn more about evidence-based but non-conventional, non-toxic MM therapies, please scroll down the page, post a question or comment and I will reply to you ASAP.

Thank you,

David Emerson

  • MM Survivor
  • MM Cancer Coach
  • Director PeopleBeatingCancer

Recommended Reading:


New regimens and directions in the management of newly diagnosed multiple myeloma

The introduction of novel agents over the last decade has rapidly expanded the therapeutic landscape of multiple myeloma (MM) for both transplant-eligible and transplant-ineligible patients. The assessment of minimal residual disease (MRD) by next-generation flow cytometry or next-generation sequencing is established as a powerful predictor of long-term outcomes.
The use of MRD in response-adapted clinical trials may provide opportunities to identify candidates for treatment escalation and de-escalation.
Agents with proven activity in the relapsed and refractory setting are being studied in the management of high-risk NDMM. Here, we summarize the most recent clinical trials that have led to the current paradigms in the management of NDMM. We also discuss how novel agents could be incorporated in the newly diagnosed setting and potential clinical trial designs that could leverage MRD information with the goal of treatment optimization.

Functional Cure, Defined As PFS of More Than 7 Years, Is Achieved in 9% of Myeloma Patients in the Era of Conventional Chemotherapy and of First-Generation Novel Anti-Myeloma Agents; A Single-Center Experience over 20-Year Period

“Between January 1994 and December 2010, 406 consecutive newly diagnosed MM patients received first line therapy in the Department of Clinical Therapeutics (Athens, Greece).

All patients had symptomatic disease, based on the IMWG criteria of that period (at least one CRAB symptom to start anti-myeloma therapy). Thirty-six (8.8%; 23M/13F) patients achieved a PFS of at least 7 years (long PFS group) after frontline treatment.

The median PFS of these 36 patients is 10 years, while the other patients had a median PFS of 22 months…

In conclusion, our study in an unselected group of patients, the majority of whom did not participate in clinical trials, showed that 9% of patients with newly diagnosed myeloma experience prolonged PFS of more than 7 years (median: 10 years) even in the era of CC or first-generation novel agents.

These patients have:

  • low risk disease,
  • mainly of ISS-1 or -2,
  • no high-risk cytogenetics,
  • no or mild renal impairment,
  • and achieve deep responses after ASCT

Long-term health impacts of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation inform recommendations for follow-up

“However, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) survivors are at risk of developing long-term complications, such as

  • endocrinopathies,
  • musculoskeletal disorders,
  • cardiopulmonary compromise and
  • subsequent malignancies.

These complications have a direct impact on the morbidity and mortality experienced by HSCT survivors. Two-thirds of HSCT survivors develop at least one chronic health condition; while a fifth develop severe or life-threatening conditions. HSCT patients who have survived for at least 5 years post-transplantation are at a fourfold to ninefold increased risk of late mortality for as long as 30 years from HSCT, producing an estimated 30% lower life expectancy compared with the general population…”

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