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“So you’ve been given this diagnosis of MGUS. Monoclonal gammopathy of unknown significance. What does that mean to you? Well, what happens with age is sometimes we develop what’s called this monoclonal or army an immunoglobulin, and that’s basically part of your immune system. It’s a protein that kind of circulates, but one of them have started to now replicate into basically a clone or army of itself. Hence that monoclonal. It’s usually found because somebody was ordering something because you had a little bit of anemia or you started to have some kidney disease and they wanted to make sure it wasn’t related to that. Well, most of MGUS, 70%, don’t turn into anything. You’re going to get labs, and it’s just not going to turn into anything. But what the concern is is it could eventually turn into what’s called multiple myeloma or put you in a status of smoldering myeloma.
And when that happens with multiple myeloma and you start having deposition of these proteins into your organs that cause problems. It can cause you to have kidney failure or kidney disease. It can cause you to have anemia because your bone marrow is crowded with plasma cells. It can cause your calcium to get high. It can do multiple things that really need very close attention and treatment because it could be reversed if you treat the myeloma. But like I said, most of MGUS is just MGUS for your entire life, 70% or so. And will just be watched serially or annually with labs. Another part of MGUS or myeloma is it can cause neuropathy. So it might not be classic multiple myeloma, but you can have deposition of proteins into your nerves, which can cause the numbness or tingling in your hands and feet.”
