Preexisting osteoporosis is an important risk factor for mortality risk in cancer-free postmenopausal women who go on to develop multiple myeloma, results of a recent analysis suggest.
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High fracture risk was associated with an increased risk of death, independent of other clinical risk factors, in this analysis of postmenopausal women in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) data set.
The findings help define osteoporosis as an important prognostic factor associated with mortality in postmenopausal women who develop myeloma, according to study author Ashley E. Rosko, MD, of Ohio State University, Columbus, and her colleagues.
“Osteoporosis is highly prevalent in aging adults, and very little is known on how this comorbid condition contributes to outcomes in individuals who develop myeloma,” wrote Dr. Rosko and her coauthors. Their report is in the journal Clinical Lymphoma, Myeloma and Leukemia.
The analysis involved 362 women in the WHI data set who developed myeloma and had no history of any cancer at baseline. Women in the WHI were between 50 and 79 years of age and postmenopausal at baseline when originally recruited at 40 U.S. centers between 1993 and 1998.
Dr. Rosko and her colleagues calculated bone health for women in the data set using the Fracture Risk Assessment Tool (FRAX), a web-based tool that calculates 10-year probability of hip and other major osteoporotic fractures.
Of the 362 women who developed myeloma, 98 were classified as having high FRAX scores, defined as a 10-year probability of 3% or greater for hip fracture, or 20% or greater for other major osteoporosis-related fractures.
With a median follow-up of 10.5 years, the adjusted risk of death was elevated in women with high FRAX scores, according to investigators, with a covariate-adjusted hazard ratio of 1.51 (95% confidence interval, 1.01-2.25; P = .044) versus women with low FRAX scores.
Of the 362 patients who developed myeloma, 226 died during the follow-up period. That included 71 women with high FRAX scores, or 72% of that subset; and 155 women with low FRAX scores, or 59% of that subset, investigators reported.
These findings suggest osteoporosis is an “important comorbidity” in women who develop multiple myeloma, Dr. Rosko and her coauthors said in a discussion of the study results.
“Recognizing osteoporosis as a risk factor associated with multiple myeloma mortality is an important prognostic factor in postmenopausal women,” they said.
This investigation was supported in part by the National Cancer Institute. The researchers reported having no relevant financial disclosures.
SOURCE: Rosko AE et al. Clin Lymphoma Myeloma Leuk. 2018 Sep;18(9):597-602.e1.