Program Title

Rebecca Law: 

Let's talk about treatment adherence for myeloma patients. What have you and your colleagues learned about the impact on outcomes related to your study?

Dr. Sikander Ailawadhi: 

Treatment adherence is a known phenomenon or a known issue in any of the diseases or healthcare problems whenever the treatment is given chronically. So we can imagine that if a patient had to be given treatment for 6 months, it's easy to make sure that they stay on the treatment, they take it and they get the benefit. But if a patient -- like a patient with multiple myeloma -- is expected to be on treatment for their whole life after their diagnosis, it's important to figure out how the patients may stay on treatment.

Dr. Sikander Ailawadhi:

There's been data presented from real world analysis, that while for example, a particular regimen which has shown -- lets say -- four years of benefit on a clinical trial, that same regimen when it's used in the real world setting, shows a much shorter benefit. And that is directly associated with the fact that patients may not get the same treatment for a long enough duration.

Dr. Sikander Ailawadhi:

I don't say that it's necessarily a patient's mistake, and they're not taking the treatment correctly. Sometimes even the physicians may say "well, you've responded, let me back scale or downscale the drugs so that we can save up something for later." But in myeloma, it has been shown again and again, if you use the right treatment for the right duration and you get a deep response, you're more likely to do better.

So, while we have all these regimens that are giving us benefit in the clinical trial settings, those regimens are giving the benefit to the patients but not for long enough. So staying on the treatments and managing the side effects correctly is important so we can get the maximum benefit from a regimen.