VIDEO: Multiple myeloma risk factors largely unknown for ‘vast majority of patients’

Editor's note: This is an automatically generated transcript. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

We don't always know why people get myeloma, as you know. It's more common the older we get. So median age diagnosis in the late sixties, seventies. It's more common in men. We know it's more common in the Black community. There are epidemiologic studies looking at environmental exposures, but these tend to be very significant exposures that happen over a period of time. So there are reports about things like 9/11 and people who are first responders in 9/11, people who work in cosmetology or exposed to those kind of chemicals for many years, people who are in farming, and are exposed organ phosphates for years and years, chemical plants, things like that. But ultimately people who work in industry like, you know, manufacturing of rubber plants, those kind of things. And also people of course in the military who have certain exposures, we see an increased signal there. But for a vast majority of patients, we don't always know. There is a slight increased risk in patients who are a first-degree relative as well as someone with myeloma, so I get a lot of questions often about the role of screening, but it often I think tends to be a mix of some kind of predisposition and environmental exposure, and unfortunately, sporadic for many folks.