Managing Toxicities in Patients With MM Treated with ASCT or Novel Therapies
Michael Scordo, MD, gives an overview of a study on dysgeusia seen in patients with multiple myeloma following autologous stem cell transplant or treatment with novel agents.
Transcript:
Saad Z. Usmani, MD, MBA, FACP: Michael, you have a study you are doing as well, focused on dysgeusia?
Michael Scordo, MD: Yes, we completed a study relatively recently. We looked at dysgeusia in patients who are undergoing autologous stem cell transplant with high-dose melphalan, and what we were trying to do is measure taste disturbances specifically. So looking at the 5 different tastes and using drops of taste to assess taste changes over time after transplant. Because we know that patients report this, but it was just a general reporting of things tasting funny, so we were trying to quantify it and look at it over time, and then try to understand what the mechanisms may be. One of the things we found in that study is that taste disturbances do drop, that’s pretty clear. But we were able to detect specific taste changes that changed in the low count period after transplant and then recovered, usually by day 30.
Another interesting thing is that many patients come into the transplant with taste disturbances at baseline, so that’s going back to what we were saying before about the neuropathy, and understanding what the baseline level of neuropathy may be. But I think we had some clues from some of the corollary data we did in that study to understand what the mechanisms may be. I think it’s always better to understand mechanistically what might be going on, and then we can try to target that with therapeutic strategies.
Saad Z. Usmani, MD, MBA, FACP: This could be a very nice quality-of-life study, a real-world study, that we can institute in our patients getting bispecifics. I’m giving Dr Tan an idea of how to forge a collaboration here. I think it would be important to look at this more objectively, like you did for the autologous stem cell transplant patient population. This is another excellent case and a nice discussion.
Transcript edited for clarity.
