Hello and welcome to the zero to finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about myeloma.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on myeloma, you can find them at zero definals.com

slash myeloma or in the hematology section of the zero definals medicine book.

So let's get straight into it.

Myeloma is a cancer of a specific type of cell in the blood called plasma cells.

And these plasma cells are a type of bee lymphocyte that produce antibodies.

Cancer in a specific type of plasma cell results in large quantities of a single type of antibody being produced. A myeloma accounts for about 1% of all cancers.

Multiple myeloma is where the myeloma affects multiple areas of the body, and monoclonal gamopathy of undetermined

significance, or M-GUS, is where there is an excess of a single type of antibody or antibody

components without other features of myeloma or cancer. This is often an incidental finding in an otherwise healthy person

and as the name suggests that significance is unclear.

So it may progress to myeloma or it may not

and patients are often followed up routinely to monitor for progression of the disease.

Smouldering myeloma is where there is a progression of Mugus

with higher levels of antibodies or antibody components,

but it's not a full myeloma.

So it's a pre-malignant condition,

and it's more likely to progress to myeloma than M-Gus,

however, it's not progressed there yet.

There's a condition called Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia, which is a type of smoldering

myeloma where there's an excess of IGM specifically. Let's talk about the path of physiology.

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