Symptom experience of patients undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma: a longitudinal real-world electronic...

Patients with multiple myeloma (MM) experience significant symptom burden. We used a symptom monitoring app to longitudinally characterize the MM treatment experience in detail based on line of therapy (LOT).

Adults with MM on active treatment completed weekly symptom monitoring surveys. Patients on their 4th LOT or greater were considered heavily pretreated. We characterized moderate to very severe (MOD-VS) symptom prevalence, weekly symptom burden, symptom bother (FACT-GP5), and health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) (EORTC QLQ-C30 Item 30) per LOT.

We considered 109 patients on LOT < 4 and 47 on LOT ≥ 4. The top MOD-VS symptoms were fatigue (71.6% of patients), muscle pain (59.8%), general pain (51.6%), numbness/tingling (48.4%), and insomnia (47.6%). More patients on LOT ≥ 4 experienced numbness/tingling (66.7% vs. 41.3%; OR 2.84, 95% CI 1.27-6.37; p = 0.0098) and fatigue (83.3% vs. 65.6%; OR 2.60, 95% CI 0.96-7.09; p = 0.0557). Some symptoms (fatigue, muscle pain, anxiety) persisted for months among patients on LOT ≥ 4, but patients on LOT < 4 also had unmet longitudinal needs (numbness/tingling, dyspnea). Patients on LOT ≥ 4 had more weeks with ≥ 3 MOD-VS symptoms (27.1% of weeks vs. 15.7%; OR 2.56, 95% CI 1.07-6.08; p = 0.0337) and experienced high symptom bother more often (39.1% of surveys vs. 30.0%; OR 4.23, 95% CI 1.37-13.10; p = 0.0123). HR-QoL was similar between groups.

Heavily pretreated patients experienced greater symptom burden and bother, but patients at earlier LOTs also had unmet needs. Interventions are needed to improve symptom management in MM regardless of LOT, but most pressingly for heavily pretreated patients.