What Is Multiple Myeloma Cancer and Is It Treatable?


Colin Powell, the first Black secretary of state, had multiple myeloma. The form of blood cancer inhibits the immune system and greatly renders vaccines ineffective, including those for Covid-19.

It is a cancer that attacks plasma cells that make antibodies necessary for the body’s immune defense. It also lives in the bone marrow, leaving out the spongy material in the middle of the bones and preventing the formation of healthy plasma cells. In addition to weakening the immune system, cancer can also lead to kidney damage.

Multiple myeloma appears to occur as random bad luck for those who develop the disease, and scientists cannot yet predict this based on genetic or environmental factors. But there are risk factors, and Mr. Powell had it. Being black doubles the risk as being a man. Almost all multiple myeloma patients are over the age of 45. Mr. Powell was 84 years old.

However, it is a rare cancer that accounts for only 1.8 percent of cancers in the United States, with 34,920 new cases per year, a rate that has remained flat over the past decade, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The five-year survival rate for cancer is 55.6 percent, and this rate has hardly declined over the past decade, despite the introduction of more complex drugs. About 12,410 deaths per year, or 2 percent of national cancer deaths, are the result of multiple myeloma.

There is no known way to prevent the disease.

Patients in the early stages of multiple myeloma may not notice any symptoms – their disease can be detected in a routine blood or urine test. Later, as the disease progresses, patients may experience bone pain, fever or frequent infections, as well as fatigue, difficulty breathing and weakness in their arms or legs. Their skin can bruise easily and their bones can break easily.

Treatments include chemotherapy and radiation, and stem cell transplants, where cells in a person’s bone marrow are deliberately destroyed and new cells are infused to repopulate the bone marrow. These replacement cells may be the patient’s own blood-forming bone marrow cells, may be removed and stored before the bone marrow is destroyed, or may be cells from a closely related donor. A stem cell transplant with the patient’s own cells can put the disease in remission, but it will eventually return.

The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a newer treatment designed to directly attack cancer using T cells of the patient’s own immune system or using drugs designed to block certain molecules on cancer cell surfaces.



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