The latest study from Mayo clinic’s department of Hematology claimed that a symptomless blood disorder called monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) is apparently not connected to several critical diseases as thought before. This may supposedly save patients from going through unnecessary treatment.
Grave diseases like multiple myeloma, primary amyloidosis and Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia are some of the diseases that seems to have originated from MGUS. A possible connection between MUGS and many more diseases have apparently been known to exist by physicians. So as a precaution, patients with MGUS who had these disorders were supposedly put through investigations and sometimes additional treatment. Apparently affecting roughly 3 percent of the U.S. population, MGUS is somewhat a common disorder.
A total of 17,398 patients were apparently tested for the presence or absence of MGUS. Among the patients tested, 605 cases of MGUS were claimed to be detected. The experts then looked at the frequency of over 16,000 different diagnosis codes in those with MGUS and those without. 14 real disease associations were apparently recognized from the study, while 61 disease associations with MGUS were determined to be coincidental. Adding to multiple myeloma, the connections were supposedly considered to be real including vertebral, hip fractures and osteoporosis.
S. Vincent Rajkumar, M.D., of Mayo Clinic’s Department of Hematology and senior author on the study mentioned that in addition to the article, they have made available on the journal Web site an appendix that has the raw data on all 16,062 hospital diagnosis codes which they think will be valuable to other researchers in the field.
This study was published in the August 2009 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.