Increasing multiple myeloma mortality rates in the elderly: demonstration of increasing dependency with increasing...

Multiple myeloma mortality rates in the elderly are increasing. Using published United States mortality data, annual age-specific multiple myeloma mortality rates from 1968 to 1989 were determined for age groups over age 60 and compared to corresponding annual age group population sizes. Rising multiple myeloma mortality rates among the elderly in the United States from 1968 to 1989 were increasingly dependent, with increasing age, upon increasing age group population size. This finding suggests that differential survival, and its effect upon the surviving gene pool in an aging population, may account for observed increasing multiple myeloma mortality rates in recent successive elderly cohorts. A similar conclusion regarding increasing multiple myeloma mortality rates in the elderly has been derived using the Strehler-Mildvan modification of the Gompertz relationship.