Cancer Medicine Open Access ORIGINAL RESEARCH Clinical significance of granule-containing myeloma cells in patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma Kazuhito Suzuki1, Shingo Yano1, Kaichi Nishiwaki1, Koji Sano1, Takaki Shimada1, Yuichi Yahagi1, Yoji Ogasawara1, Katsuki Sugiyama1, Shinobu Takahara1, Takeshi Saito1, Kinuyo Kasama1, Jiro Minami1, Hiroki Yokoyama1, Yutaro Kamiyama1, Atsushi Katsube1, Hidekazu Masuoka1, Mitsuji Katori1, Tomohito Machishima1, Aya Ouchi1, Nobuaki Dobashi1, Ken Kaito2, Noriko Usui1,3 & Keisuke Aiba1 1Division of Clinical Oncology/Hematology, Department of Internal Medicine, The Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan 2Central Clinical Laboratory, The Jikei University Hospital, Tokyo, Japan 3Division of Transfusion Medicine, The Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan Keywords Abstract CD49e, CD56, granules, morphology, myeloma, prognosis The clinical features and prognostic significance of myeloma cells containing granules remain unclear. The purpose of this retrospective study was to inves- Correspondence tigate the clinical significance of granule-containing myeloma cells in patients Kazuhito Suzuki, Division of Clinical with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma (NDMM). We retrospectively analyzed Oncology/Hematology, The Jikei University the records of 122 patients diagnosed with NDMM between January 2007 and School of Medicine, 3-25-8 Nishi-Shinbashi, December 2013. Granule-containing myeloma cells were defined as myeloma Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-8461, Japan. Tel: +81-3-3433-1111; cells that exhibited three or more granules in their cytoplasm by May-Giemsa Fax: +81-3-3436-3233; staining. The patients were classified into two groups, the granule-containing E-mail:
[email protected] myeloma (GM) and nongranule-containing myeloma (non-GM) groups, depend- ing on the proportion of myeloma cells that contained granules (cut-off value: Funding Information 10%).