ASH 2022 | Multivariate model to predict the need for bone marrow sampling in patients with MGUS

So predicting the need for bone marrow, I think it’s a very important thing because smoldering myeloma is quite common. We actually just published a paper about that, showing that half a percent of people 40 years and older have smoldering myeloma. We also know that the prevalence of MGUS is around 4 to 5%. So a lot of people have it, and you can’t go on and do bone marrow in 5% of any population.

So what we did there is we tried to perform a model to predict those that would have more than 10% plasma cells in the bone marrow. That is, they would have at least what we call smoldering myeloma. So we’re trying to help clinicians and aid people with an M spike on, “Should we do bone marrow or should we not?”

We have actually launched a homepage with this model. So if we go on iStopMM.com/riskmodel, you can put in your IgG levels and M spikes and total immunoglobulins. Then you just push calculate, that gives you the risk based on this very large model. So I think it’s useful to clinicians and for participants or people with these disorders as well, to aid them. It’s like, “Is my probability like 2% of having smoldering myeloma, or is it like 70%, and I should probably do more bone marrow?” So this, I think, is very useful.