Overall survival of Black patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma in the era of triplet and quadruplet therapies

Black individuals have a higher incidence of multiple myeloma (MM) and worse survival than White patients [ 1 ]. Growing evidence suggests that these survival differences are due to inequities in timely diagnosis and effective treatment utilization [ 2 , 3 , 4 ], given that Black patients generally exhibit equal or better survival than White patients after adjustment for key treatment-access barriers [ 2 , 5 ]. Recent evidence also indicates that genomic features do not account for differences in MM risk across genetic ancestry groups [ 3 ]. An earlier Veterans Affairs (VA)-based study demonstrated that with equal access to myeloma therapy, Black patients have superior survival compared with White individuals [ 6 ]. However, it is unknown whether this finding holds in other care settings and in the era of triplet and quadruplet therapies. Here, we compare the overall survival of Black and White patients newly diagnosed with MM from 2017 to 2023 in a large civilian integrated health system. In a prior analysis of this cohort, we found no race-based differences in the use of triplet or quadruplet regimens within 1 year of diagnosis [ 7 ]. The present study extends that utilization-focused work by examining whether similar treatment patterns were accompanied by comparable survival outcomes.