
Rachel Kim
Tenafly High School, USAPresentation Title:
Multiple myeloma and AIDS: A statistical study and racial the disparities
Abstract
Multiple Myeloma (MM) is an abnormality of plasma cells in the bone marrow, caused by several chromosomal translocations in chromosomes 13, 14, or 15 (Alexander et al., 2007). The etiology and risk factors are still unknown, but Black race is one of the risk factors accepted by clinical practitioners. While AIDS is also generally accepted as a risk factor, it is not yet an accepted factor. The data for incidence rates, mortality rates, and trend over time of myeloma was collected on the United States Cancer Statistics and its Data Visualizer Database (CDC, 2025), and data for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) were collected from the Center for Disease Control National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention AtlasPlus (AtlasPlus - Tables, n.d.). Graphs were made with the collected data, which inferred similar trends of MM incidence and AIDS incidence in the five racial categories: White, Black, American Indian/Native, Asian, and Hispanic. Such racial disparities are assumed to be caused by structural, socioeconomic, and cultural aspects of the Black communities, discouraging Black individuals from early screenings, diagnosis, and treatment of HIV/AIDS and even those of cancers, and the instilled racism, cultural mistrust, social obstacles, and limited access to healthcare/Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) are the contributing factors to such community behaviors. Further studies and research on biomedical and genetic aspects are necessary, but current statistics suggest that there is an association between AIDS and multiple myeloma, intensifying the racial disparities among the diagnoses of the two conditions.
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