By: Emily Hayes
About 8% of patients with the slow-growing Waldenström macroglobulinemia (WM) died from cardiovascular diseases – not their cancer – between 1999-2000, raising questions about the need for treatment of these comorbidities, according to a population study based on US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.
For the study of the rare lymphoma subtype, researchers examined the CDC’s Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) for deaths of adults with WM over age 25.
“While treatment advances have improved survival, patients with WM have a higher risk of complications from the disease itself, its treatment, and associated comorbidities,” researchers explained in a SOHO 2025 abstract.
“Mortality data regarding the underlying causes of death in WM patients is limited,” they noted.
Out of 11,393 deaths reported in patients with WM in the US during the study period, 82.86% died from WM, which translates to an age-adjusted mortality rate (AAMR) per 100,000 of 0.19. The next most common causes of death were cardiovascular diseases (8.25%), chronic lower respiratory diseases (1.68%) and cerebrovascular diseases (1.42%).
Of the cardiovascular causes, ischemic heart disease was most prevalent, accounting for 4.76% of total WM mortality.
Only about 1,000 to 1,5000 people are diagnosed with WM each year in the U.S., according to the American Cancer Society. In a recent real-world study of WM patients in Taiwan, comorbidities were associated with worse survival rates and the most common were hypertension (20.7% of WM participants studied) and chronic kidney disease (15.6%).
“Further research is needed to evaluate whether targeted interventions for cardiovascular risk reduction may benefit mortality outcomes,” the WONDER study researchers concluded.
Reference
Gandhi D and Deshmukh I. Underlying Cause of Death in Patients With Waldenström Macroglobulinemia in the United States: A CDC WONDER Analysis (1999–2020). Presented at the thirteenth annual meeting of the Society of Hematologic Oncology (SOHO 2025); September 3-6, 2025; Houston, Texas.
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