Monitoring Treatment & Disease

Freelite offers a sensitive indicator of patient status in treatment and remission of Multiple Myeloma and AL amyloidosis.

Free light chains have a half-life of just 2-6 hours in serum and can be used as a rapid indicator of response to treatment.

The sensitivity of Freelite assays is much greater than currently available urine assays.

Nonsecretory Multiple Myeloma1

The sensitivity of Freelite can help to detect and monitor these patients effectively.

Image 7

Changes in serum free light chain concentrations and clinical status in 6 patients with Nonsecretory Myeloma.
NR= Upper limit of normal ranges

Light Chain Multiple Myeloma2

Alyanakian et al. concluded, "Immunonephelometric measurement of serum free light chains are a reliable method for follow up of patients with light chain secreting monoclonal gammopathies". Also that for cases featuring hardly measurable amounts of light chain in the urine "...the serum free light chain assay proved sensitive enough for correlation with clinical events."

Image 8

Intact Immunoglobulin Multiple Myeloma3

Freelite is a more accurate, faster marker of tumour kill than intact immunoglobulin.

Image 9

Monitoring of a Myeloma patient using IgG κ and free κ. Electrophoresis gels are shown for each sample. CVAMP = cyclophosphamide, vincristine, adriamycin, melphalan, prednisolone: HDM: high dose melphalan and stem cell transplant.

AL Amyloidosis

Measurement of serum free light chains with Freelite has been shown to follow clearly the course of disease whilst the monoclonal IgG kappa, detectable by immunofixation electrophoresis, remained unchanged.

Image 10

Changes in serum monoclonal proteins during the disease course of a patient with AL amyloidosis.

M&P: melphalan & prednisolone
PBSCT: peripheral blood stem cell autograft
ESRF: end stage renal failure

Summary

 

References

  1. Mark Drayson, Liang X. Tang, Roger Drew, Graham P. Mead, Hugh Carr-Smith, and Arthur R. Bradwell.
    "Serum free light-chain measurements for identifying and monitoring patients with nonsecretory multiple myeloma"
    Blood 2001;97:9:2900-2902

    Reference: MKG183 Quantity:

  2. Marie-Alexandra Alyanakian, Aicha Abbas, Richard Delarue, Bertrand Arnulf and Pierre Aucouturier.
    "Free Immunoglobulin Light-Chain Serum Levels in the Follow-up of Patients With Monoclonal Gammopathies: Correlation With 24-hr Urinary Light-Chain Excretion"
    Am J Hematology 2004;75:246-248

    Reference: MKG222 Quantity:

  3. G. P. Mead, H. D. Carr-Smith, M. T. Drayson, G. J. Morgan, J. A. Child and A. R. Bradwell.
    "Serum free light chains for monitoring multiple myeloma"
    BJH 2004;126:348-354

    Reference: MKG228 Quantity: