Poster Presentation Clinical Oncology Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting 2024

Allergic disease and risk of multiple myeloma in EMMA: a case-control study (#367)

Simon Cheah 1 2 , Adrian J Lowe 2 , Nina Afshar 1 2 , Julie K Bassett 1 , Wendy Cozen 3 , Simon J Harrison 4 5 , John L Hopper 2 , Harindra Jayasekara 1 2 , Miles Prince 4 6 , Claire M Vajdic 7 , Nicole Wong Doo 8 , Graham G Giles 1 2 9 , Shyamali C Dharmage 2 , Roger L Milne 1 2 9
  1. Cancer Epidemiology Division, Cancer Council Victoria, East Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  2. Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  3. University of California, Irvine, California, USA
  4. Sir Peter MacCallum Department of Oncology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  5. Clinical Haematology, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville, VIC, Australia
  6. Epworth Healthcare, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  7. Kirby Institute, UNSW, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  8. Concord Clinical School, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  9. Precision Medicine, School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health, Monash University, Clayton, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Background and aims

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a haematological malignancy responsible for significant morbidity, yet our knowledge regarding MM aetiology remains limited. This analysis investigated whether an history of allergic conditions was associated with MM risk.

Methods

Incident cases (n=782) of MM were recruited mainly via cancer registries in Victoria and NSW. The controls included in the analysis (n=733) were siblings (n=436) or partners (n=297) of cases. Unconditional multivariable logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (OR), 95% confidence intervals (CI) and p-values for associations between self-reported allergic conditions (asthma, eczema, food allergy, hay fever) and MM risk. Missing data was handled with multiple imputation and causal diagram analysis was used for covariate selection.

Results

We found an history of eczema was inversely associated with MM risk (OR = 0.54, 95% CI = 0.42 – 0.70), as was history of any allergic condition (OR = 0.68, 95% CI = 0.55 – 0.84). We found that compared with no history of allergic conditions, higher frequency of reported conditions was associated with increasingly lower estimated risk of MM; from one reported condition (OR = 0.76, 95% CI = 0.58 – 0.98), to four conditions (OR = 0.50, 95% CI = 0.23 – 1.09). No notable associations were identified for food allergy, asthma, or hay fever alone.

Conclusions and future directions

Our findings extend the knowledge of MM risk factor epidemiology in Australia. Research into potential underlying mechanisms might help explain disparate results of various studies examining the association between MM and allergic conditions.