The purpose of clinical trials is to study the safety and effectiveness of a medication. Sometimes, clinical trials involving humans find that a medication does not work and the study is stopped. This just happened in a trial looking at a blood cancer medication.

Huge advances have been made in the understanding of multiple myeloma. There are a variety of approaches for treating this blood cancer. The trick is to provide what’s best for the individual patient.

Multiple myeloma is a blood cancer that affects nearly 22,000 Americans every year. It develops in mostly older people when plasma cells in the bone marrow grow out of control.

Health Canada, the Canadian version of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), has issued an alert regarding the medication  REVLIMID ( lenalidomide ) that's used to treat multiple myeloma .