Renal failure in multiple myeloma and its treatment

Renal failure is a serious complication of multiple myeloma, and up to 50% of patients with this most frequent haematological malignancy may develop some form of renal impairment.  The aetiology of renal damage is multifactorial, but increased production of free light chains that are filtered into the urine is crucial for the development of renal failure and could be associated with distal tubule involvement (myeloma kidney, light chain cast nephropathy) or with fully developed Fanconi syndrome in proximal tubule damage (proximal tubulopathy, light chain proximal tubulopathy). Glomerular damage most often manifests as AL amyloidosis or light chain deposition disease; both cause severe nephrotic syndrome. Early and adequate chemotherapy in association with symptomatic treatment can lead to rapid reduction of serum light chain concentration which is necessary to prevent development of renal failure. At present, effective therapeutic procedures can be used for this purpose, where especially a triple combination of treatment containing one of the proteasome inhibitors (bortezomib, carfilzomib or ixazomib) is able to elicit a haematological response within a few days. If there is a good haematological response to treatment, up to 50% of patients with renal failure will restore their renal function. Renal function repair can be accelerated by removing light chains from serum by dialysis with high-cutoff membrane (HCO-HD). Using this procedure can increase the chance of dialysis independence in more than 60% of patients with renal failure.  Data from previously published studies on HCO-HD (MYRE or EuLITE study) have not yielded as optimistic results as originally expected, however, HCO-HD could be beneficial for some subgroup of patients with renal failure in myeloma kidney. Despite the fact that overall prognosis and survival of patients with multiple myeloma have dramatically improved, the condition with renal failure in these patients remains serious.