Abstract 6286: Relationship of ABO blood groups and length of survival of multiple myeloma patients
Authors: Tiu Zena M. , Sweeney Nathan W. , Cheung Christian S. , Chmielewski Cynthia , Ahlstrom Jennifer M. 
Published: June 2022

Background: Multiple Myeloma (MM) is a rare cancer affecting plasma cells. Patients with MM have several lines of treatment options and overall survival has increased with current treatments, nonetheless, MM remains currently incurable. It has been recently noted that ABO blood types may influence the survival of MM patients (PMID: 33362882). The purpose of this study is to find if there is a relationship between the survival of MM patients and their ABO blood type.

Methods: Patients were drawn from the self-reported HealthTree Cure Hub database which included 1,173 individuals. 458 patients reported having A blood type, 56 patients reported having AB blood type, 155 patients reported having B blood type, and 504 patients reported having O blood type. Patients who did not report a blood type were excluded from this analysis. An analysis of variance was conducted to analyze the relationship between the survival time (total time to next treatment) and a patient's ABO blood type. A t-test was conducted to compare the survival time of O blood group with other blood types. Additionally, an analysis of variance was conducted to determine the relationship between ABO blood groups and a patient's likelihood of being considered high risk.

Results: We found that there was a relationship between total time to next treatment and ABO blood type. On average the total time to next treatment of MM patients with O blood type was longer compared to other blood types with an average of 2027 days. Patients with A blood type had an average of 1762 days, AB blood type had an average of 1882 days, and B blood type had an average of 1747 days. While the difference in average survival time was not statistically significant (p-value = 0.138), it is still worth noting that there is a difference in average total survival time for patients with O blood type. We further compared the average total time to next treatment between O blood group and all other blood types. We saw that there was a statistical significance (p-value = 0.040) and concluded that on average the survival time of patients with O blood type is higher than other blood groups by 250 days. We also investigated whether or not patients in certain ABO blood groups are more inclined to have high-risk mutations. We categorized patients as high risk and standard risk-based on guidelines defined by Mayo Clinic’s mSMART. We found that there was no statistical significance (p-value = 0.797) and concluded that patients are equally likely to be considered high risk for all ABO blood groups.

Conclusion: Our results indicated that MM patients with blood type O have a longer survival time on average than patients with blood type A, AB, and B. We saw that a patient’s likelihood of having a high-risk mutation is the same across all ABO blood groups. Our results may help lead to further research investigating why despite having a similar proportion of patients who are considered high risk, patients with O blood type differ in average survival time.

Citation Format: Zena M. Tiu, Nathan W. Sweeney, Christian S. Cheung, Cynthia Chmielewski, Jennifer M. Ahlstrom. Relationship of ABO blood groups and length of survival of multiple myeloma patients [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 6286.