How Is Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) Testing Used in Myeloma Care?
How Is Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) Testing Used in Myeloma Care? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
Myeloma expert Dr. Nina Shah explains minimal residual disease (MRD) and how the results of this test may impact patient care and treatment.
Dr. Nina Shah is Associate Professor of Medicine in the Fepartment of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and treats patients at the Hematology and Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinic at UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Learn more about Dr. Shah, here.
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Transcript:
Katherine Banwell:
What is minimal residual disease testing, and when should it take place?
Dr. Shah:
Minimal residual disease is exactly what it sounds like. It’s the disease that you can’t see under the microscope, but it’s still there.
And I sort of equate it to the little deep food particles that are in a pot after you clean it and really, really scrub it, but still, something is in there. And that’s what it is for myeloma. And really, that depends on how sensitive your test is. We now know we can test for at least one in a million cells by some advanced techniques, and we like to test to see if there’s any disease left after certain treatments are done – for example, after a patient undergoes an autologous stem cell transplant.
Katherine Banwell:
What impact do results have on care decisions?
Dr. Shah:
Minimal residual disease testing can be useful for patients to understand the true burden of their disease. For example, it may be that there’s no more M-protein in the blood, or the light chains are normal, or even the bone marrow showed no plasma cells. But the minimal residual disease testing may show that, in fact, there are a few cells still in there, and that can help patients to decide, “Yes, I want proceed with maintenance therapy,” for example, or “No, I would not like to.” Although, we generally recommend it, patients like to have as much information as possible to make their decisions.
