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Many clinical, laboratory, and molecular markers are correlated with treatment response and survival in multiple myeloma (MM) patients. In an interphase cytogenetic analysis, investigators in France used fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to evaluate a panel of MM markers in pretreatment marrow samples from 1064 patients (age, <66). All patients received induction chemotherapy with the VAD (vincristine, doxorubicin [Adriamycin], dexamethasone) regimen, followed by tandem courses of high-dose melphalan (Alkeran) and stem-cell transplantation, and were further randomized to maintenance or no maintenance therapy.
Approximately 90% of patients had genetic abnormalities that were detected with FISH; those with the chromosomal translocation…