IMS 2026 | Predictors of health-related quality of life in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma

So we found that out of the CRAB criteria it is actually the hypercalcemia, anemia and bone lesion that stood out to be associated with inferior quality of life scores. In particular, when we use the EORTC, the QLQ-C30 and the MY20, so the global health score definitely reduced for patients who’ve had these features. And also in particular, physical functioning, social functioning, and for some of them also role functioning, fatigue, and pain as well. So interestingly, as you’ve already mentioned, it’s not the high-risk cytogenetics and also not renal impairment. The other thing that we found was a higher ISS score, also associated with inferior quality of life scores. And when we did the multivariate analysis, we found that the independent negative predictor of quality of life scores would be ISS stage, age, anemia, and bone lesion. So I think that’s quite interesting. It might be a bit in contrast to what we might believe that higher cytogenetics risk would be associated with worse quality of life. Well, at least at the baseline kind of context. Yeah, when we say high risk cytogenetics, we think more about outcomes perhaps and how patients will do well or not well with treatment. So that’s something that, you know, you have to explain to the patient what we mean by high risk. Now, quality of life can be quite different and this can change, you know, as well throughout the treatment. And, you know, from previous studies, we know that baseline quality of life often is reduced for myeloma patients and that kind of improves throughout treatment and also in sort of you know in big trials we’ve demonstrated that as well but for this study we have demonstrated that certain disease features are associated with reduced quality of life scores in certain domains you know for example if you show that, say, anemia, there’s breathlessness and fatigue. And I think clinicians, because of this study finding, maybe can be more aware of these quality of life deficits in patients and therefore maybe focus their targets in how to help these patients, whether this is about making sure that they can function at home, do we need some more social care, or whether we need some exercise intervention to help with fatigue. So I think that’s a bit of different things. But of course, you know, with high-risk patients, maybe you will intensify treatment and how would that affect, you know, how they do in a quality of life sense. You know, we’ve heard from Dr. Kathik Ramasamy about, you know, high-risk patients in the RADAR trial and their quality of life is, you know, improved with treatment. So we also need to think about that with different types of treatments for high risk, does that, you know, affect their quality of life? So, yeah, both can be, yeah.

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