Peculiarities of nervous system lesions in patients with multiple myeloma

: Multiple myeloma (MM) is B-cellular lymphoproliferative disease. We studied 174 patients aged 33-84 with established diagnosis of MM. Among the persons included into analyzed cohort the data about the presence of polyneuropathy at the moment of MM verification were available in 72 (41.4%) persons. Spinal cord involvement due to the various pathogenetic reasons was revealed in 24 (13.8 +/- 2.6%) patients. Compressional alteration was observed in 19 cases and in 5 patients the spinal cord involvement had uncompressional genesis. The connection between the peripheral polyneuropathy and the unfavourable prognosis in MM patients was statistically insignificant. In the patients with spinal cord prelum the probability of lethal outcome within 1 month was 0.26. It is 10 times more than in patients suffering only from peripheral polyneuropathy. Thus polyneuropathy in MM patients occurs in 41.4 +/- 3.7% cases and more often during the III stage of disease. There is a distinct interrelation between the nervous trunk involvement and disease severity. In the structure of polyneuropathy the sensorimotor variant (76.4 +/- 5.0%) prevails. According to our data the spinal cord involvement occurs in 13.8 +/- 2.6% cases.