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A presented at the American Society of Hematology annual meeting explored how relationship dynamics, including satisfaction and strain, influence physical and emotional outcomes during autologous stem cell transplant for multiple myeloma.

In this exclusive 番茄社区app video, Ashley Rosko, MD, of the Ohio State University in Columbus, discusses the effect of marital contagion on patient and partner health, highlighting how improving relationship dynamics could enhance outcomes during myeloma treatment.

Following is a transcript of her remarks:

The purpose of our study was to be able to explore this idea of marital contagion, that health behaviors and emotional behaviors may change or are influenced by one another over a period of time. This kind of builds on the idea of emotional contagion where moods can be influenced by one another, but also health behaviors that can be influenced by one another.

And, particularly, we wanted to be able to explore the impact of this when someone's diagnosed with cancer, specifically multiple myeloma, and undergoing a major stress like transplant.

So, in our study, we first explored some of the relationships with patients and their partners and differences when it comes to concordance with patients in terms of their overall health. We saw that things like body mass index and emotional support were similar among patients and their partners, but there was other kind of discord in terms of performance status.

Importantly, one of the main take-homes of our study is that when we looked at things like couples' satisfaction, we know that with increase in couples' satisfaction, there was improved quality of life. We also saw with increase in couple satisfaction that there was a decrease in depression.

Other things we also found among patients is that people who have a strong relationship also have improved physical performance metrics.

One of the other factors we identified within our study is about couples' strain. We found that for patients who are strained, that they have lower physical function and have increased frailty.

So, we think this study is important because it really explores that dynamic between the patient and the partner and whether or not we can capitalize on improving those relationships and not assuming that if there's a caregiver or partner identified before the transplant, that that is a strong relationship -- and making sure that, if we can identify some factors associated with that, to be able to help improve that, so we can improve things like depression, physical function, and overall quality of life.

I think, importantly, when we talk about a standard approach to patients coming into autologous stem cell transplant, we often identify a caregiver, someone who can provide transportation back and forth, who can be able to provide education and things like that. But they assume this role, which is quite stressful. In fact, we know that a partner's anxiety and depression can exceed that of the patient, before and after stem cell transplant.

So, one of those things is that I think that will be important in moving forward, is that if we can ask those questions about couples' strain and the health of that relationship and being able to intervene on that sooner than later -- whether that's through couples' health, through psychosocial oncology, whether the patient needs ongoing services for psychosocial oncology, or their partner themselves, and being able to identify that early and intervene upon it.

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