The question of how myeloma cells cause destruction of skeletal tissue has interested scientists for many years, and knowledge in this field has developed in parallel with the understanding of physiological bone remodeling. The identification of bioactive proteins of the cytokine class during the last decades of the previous century and mapping of their role in the regulation of anabolic and catabolic processes in bone, led to a sequence of hypotheses about how the same peptides also could be involved in myeloma-driven bone destruction. Although bone remodeling is now understood in detail, there is still no clear unified theory of how myeloma cells degrade bone. The reason for this could be that there is no single mechanism that is active in every patient. The common trait is possibly that myeloma cells benefit from bone destruction per se, and the strategy they use to accomplish this vary between patients.

骨髓瘤细胞如何引起骨骼组织破坏的问题多年来一直引起科学家的兴趣，并且在该领域的知识与对生理性骨重塑的理解同时发展。在上个世纪的最后几十年中，对细胞因子类生物活性蛋白的鉴定及其在骨合成代谢和分解代谢过程调节中的作用图谱，导致了一系列关于相同肽也如何参与骨髓瘤的假​​说。驱动的骨破坏。尽管现在已经详细了解了骨骼的重塑，但是仍然没有关于骨髓瘤细胞如何降解骨骼的清晰统一的理论。造成这种情况的原因可能是，每个患者都没有一个活跃的机制。共同特征可能是骨髓瘤细胞受益于骨破坏本身，他们用于实现此目标的策略因患者而异。