Binder M, et al. - In view of the observation that a subset of patients with multiple myeloma (MM) experience poor overall survival (OS) despite the absence of high-risk cytogenetics and lower International Staging System (ISS) stages, researchers sought to identify patient and disease characteristics that predict a high-risk phenotype among standard-risk patients via studying 1461 patients with newly diagnosed MM. Of all patients, 56% presented with standard-risk disease. Among them, worse OS was observed in correlation with advanced age, extremes of body mass index, non-hyperdiploid karyotype and abnormal lymphocyte counts. Compared to high-risk patients, better OS was noted for standard-risk patients with 0–1 of these adverse factors and 2 adverse factors. In 17% of standard-risk patients, they identified 2 or more adverse factors that were associated with OS comparable to high-risk patients. These findings suggest the utility of the readily available patient and disease characteristics in identifying patients at risk.