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When the BBC presenter Lauren Laverne revealed she has smouldering myeloma, the diagnosis sounded more alarming than it is. Her situation is more subtle and nuanced than the word “myeloma” suggests.

Smouldering myeloma is better thought of as an early warning stage – a sign that some of the cells in her bone marrow are misbehaving – rather than a fully declared blood cancer. She is under specialist care, but she is well and does not need chemotherapy or targeted drugs at this point.

Celebrity disclosures like Laverne’s often trigger a wave of understandable worry: if a healthy‑seeming broadcaster can be told she has a blood disorder out of the blue, could the same be true for anyone? To answer that, it helps to step back and look at what smouldering myeloma actually is, where it comes from, and how doctors manage it.

Deep inside our bones lies the bone marrow, a soft, busy tissue that works like a round-the-clock factory. Its job is to make the blood cells we depend on: red cells to carry oxygen, white cells to fight infection, and platelets to help our blood clot. Among the white cells are plasma cells, which produce antibodies – Y-shaped proteins that recognise germs and help the immune system clear them.

Normally, plasma cells form a diverse and mixed population, each making slightly different antibodies tuned to different threats. In myeloma, a single rogue plasma cell breaks free from the usual controls and starts to multiply.

It produces and then fills the marrow with identical copies of itself. All of these clones make the same antibody, creating a single “monoclonal” protein that can be measured in the blood. Over time, this cancerous process can crowd out normal blood production and damage bones, kidneys and the immune system.

The halfway house between health and cancer

Smouldering myeloma lives in the grey zone before all those complications. The abnormal plasma cell clone is there, and the monoclonal protein is present at higher levels than doctors would expect in a harmless, low‑level condition. But by definition, there is no organ damage: blood counts are preserved, kidneys are working normally, bones are intact and the person typically feels completely well.

At one end is a common, usually benign phenomenon in older adults, in which a tiny plasma cell clone produces a small amount of monoclonal protein but never causes trouble. At the other end is symptomatic myeloma, where the “clone” of plasma cells and its protein are clearly harming the body. Smouldering myeloma sits in the middle: more substantial than the harmless end of the spectrum, but not yet causing the anaemia, bone pain, fatigue or infections that mark advanced disease.

Lauren Laverne posted about her condition on Instagram (PA)

Being told you have a condition with “myeloma” in its name, and then hearing “we’re not going to treat this yet”, can feel counterintuitive. Patients have described a sense of holding their breath, waiting to see if or when things will change.

Crucially, the future is not fixed. Some people with smouldering myeloma will progress to symptomatic myeloma over the following few years. Others remain stable for a decade or longer, never needing treatment.

Doctors use patterns in the blood tests, bone marrow findings and sometimes genetic signatures in the plasma cells to estimate risk. Higher protein levels, more extensive marrow involvement and certain high‑risk markers raise the chance of progression; lower‑risk cases may tick along unchanged. But even the best risk scores cannot predict exactly what will happen to any one individual.

Why ‘watchful waiting’ is not doing nothing

For now, the most common approach to smouldering myeloma is “watchful waiting”. That phrase can sound passive, as if nothing is happening. In practice, it means careful, structured monitoring: regular blood and urine tests to track the monoclonal protein and kidney function, checks on calcium and red blood cell counts, and imaging or bone marrow reassessment if symptoms or results suggest a shift.

Treating everybody with smouldering myeloma as if they already had active myeloma would expose a large group of people to drug side‑effects and the psychological weight of intensive therapy, even though many would never have developed problems.

Justin Stebbing is a Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Anglia Ruskin University.

This article was first published by The Conversation and is republished under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

On the other hand, ignoring the condition would risk missing the point at which the clone starts to damage organs. Surveillance aims to catch that turn early, so that treatment can start before bones fracture, kidneys fail or severe anaemia sets in.

With modern myeloma drugs, researchers have begun to ask whether it might be better, in some higher‑risk smouldering cases, to treat earlier. Clinical trials have tested combinations of tablets and targeted antibodies in people whose smouldering myeloma looks particularly likely to progress, with encouraging results: fewer cases turning into active myeloma, and longer periods without symptoms.

This is not yet a universal strategy. It brings its own trade‑offs – side‑effects, hospital visits, the psychological shift from “being monitored” to “being a patient on treatment”. For now, decisions about early therapy are made case by case, often within specialist centres and research settings, weighing the person’s risk profile and preferences. The key point is that smouldering myeloma is not automatically a call to immediate aggressive treatment, but neither is it something doctors take lightly.

What should the rest of us take from this?

Stories like Lauren Laverne’s raise awareness of conditions that usually stay hidden in the world of haematology clinics and specialist journals. They can also fuel understandable worry: “Could I have this without knowing?” In reality, smouldering myeloma is uncommon, and it is almost always discovered because a specific blood test suggests an unusual protein, prompting more focused investigations. Routine screening in healthy people is not recommended.

For those who do receive the diagnosis, the message is one of informed vigilance rather than alarm. Smouldering myeloma does carry a higher risk of future myeloma, but many people never cross that line.

Being under regular review allows changes to be picked up early and treatment to be started when it can do the most good. At the same time, continual advances in myeloma therapy mean that, even if progression occurs, options are far better now than they were a generation ago.