<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">People with multiple myeloma, a blood malignancy of plasma cells in the bone marrow, have a poorer overall survival rate when compared to individuals without diabetes. This difference in survival due to diabetes was found in white patients in a subgroup analysis but not in black patients, according to a study published today in Blood Advances.</span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 13% of Americans have diabetes, and the prevalence of the disease is rising quickly. The majority of non-Hispanic Black adults in the U.S. who have multiple myeloma, the second most frequent blood malignancy, are affected by this disease. While investigators have long been aware of the increased risk of multiple myeloma in patients with diabetes, this is the first study to examine racial disparities in survival rates among those living with these comorbid conditions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“We knew from prior studies that patients with multiple myeloma and diabetes have lower survival rates,” explained Urvi Shah, MD, a multiple myeloma specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. “But what we did not know is how these outcomes differ between races. Diabetes is much more common in Black individuals versus white individuals, and we wanted to understand whether this difference may play a role in health outcomes among patients with both conditions.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Researchers conducted a retrospective study, collecting data from electronic health care records of 5,383 patients with multiple myeloma from two academic medical centers: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Fifteen per cent of patients included had a diabetes diagnosis (12% of white and 25% of Black patients).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Across the board, Dr. Shah and colleagues observed that among patients with myeloma, those with diabetes had poorer survival rates than those without. When analyzing results by race, however, they found that while white patients with myeloma and diabetes had lower survival rates than those without diabetes, they did not observe this finding among Black patients.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“What we did not expect to see here was that diabetes was actually associated with worse survival outcomes among white individuals with myeloma, but not Black individuals,” said Dr. Shah.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dr. Shah added that generally, one’s risk of developing diabetes increases with age. Study findings also show that overall survival decreased with age. Notably, however, in this cohort, diabetes was 50% more prevalent among Black patients 45-60 years old than white patients over 60 years old. Younger patients may tolerate multiple myeloma treatments better than older individuals, and these differences could explain some of the racial differences investigators observed in survival outcomes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When investigating the mechanisms behind these findings, Dr. Shah and colleagues observed that in genetically engineered mouse models, multiple myeloma tumors grew more rapidly in non-obese diabetic mice than in non-diabetic controls.After studying the biological mechanisms underlying tumor growth in these mice, researchers found that an insulin-related signal was overactivated in the diabetic mice, leading them to believe that higher insulin levels associated with diabetes may accelerate cancer growth. HT</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>