poor recruitment

The main aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the clinical application of the XN-1000/20 hematology analyzer for risk stratification in patients with multiple myeloma based on the number of detected plasma cells in peripheral blood at the different stages of treatment. This clinical study is observational and does not involve drugs. 100 subjects with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma will be enrolled in this study and followed for 3 years.

The presence of circulating plasma cells in patients with multiple myeloma is considered as a marker for highly proliferative disease and associated with a worse prognosis.

Plasma cell counting is conventionally done by means of peripheral blood film morphology using light microscopy. However, this manual method is laborious as well as imprecise due to the low number of cells counted, and inter-observer variability. Flow cytometry with monoclonal antibodies is unsuitable as a screening test. The procedure is not automated, and it is expensive and time consuming. Therefore, new rapid, effective and inexepensive methods are needed for risk-stratification in patients with multiple myeloma.

Automated antibody-synthesizing or secreting cells counting from routine haematology systems (XN-1000/20) without sample preparation and in less than 1 minute will further reduce the workload in haematology laboratories and it can be used for counting circulating plasma cells in peripheral blood in patients with multiple myeloma.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Diagnosis: Newly diagnosed symptomatic multiple myeloma
• Signed informed consent
• No second tumors

Exclusion Criteria:

• Monoclonal gammopathies of undefined significance
• Smoldering Multiple Myeloma
• Plasma cell leukemia

Patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma (both with and withous auto-SCT groups) at the different stages of treatment