The umbilical cord fluid is loaded with stem cells. They can treat cancer, blood diseases like anemia, and some immune system disorders, which disrupt your body's ability to defend itself.
The fluid is easy to collect and has 10 times more stem cells than those collected from bone marrow.
Stem cells from cord blood rarely carry any infectious diseases and are half as likely to be rejected as adult stem cells.
If you want the blood stored, after the birth, the doctor clamps the umbilical cord in two places, about 10 inches apart, and cuts the cord, separating mother from baby. Then they insert a needle and collect at least 40 milliliters of blood from the cord. The blood is sealed in a bag and sent to a lab or cord blood bank for testing and storage. The process only takes a few minutes and is painless for mother and baby.
cord banks will store the donated blood for use by the donor and family members only. They can be expensive. These banks charge a fee for processing and an annual fee for storage.
A stem cell transplant using an individual’s own cord blood (called an autologous transplant) cannot be used for genetic disorders such as sickle cell disease and thalassemia, because the genetic mutations that cause these disorders are present in the baby's cord blood. Other diseases that can be treated with a stem cell transplant, such as leukemia, may also already be present in a baby’s cord blood.
Because of these limits and the uncommon occurrence of the diseases that can be treated with a stem cell transplant, there have been just more than 400 autologous cord blood transplants in United States in the last 2 decades. In contrast, more than 60,000 unrelated donor cord blood transplants have been performed worldwide.
recommend against storing cord blood as a form of "biological insurance," because the benefits are too remote to justify the costs.
Although commercial cord blood banks often bill their services as "biological insurance" against future diseases, the blood doesn’t often get used. One study says the chance that a child will use their cord blood over their lifetime is between 1 in 400 and 1 in 200,000.
The stored blood can't always be used, even if the person develops a disease later on, because if the disease was caused by a genetic mutation, it would also be in the stem cells. Current research says the stored blood may be useful for only 15 years.
There are other things to consider if you have twins. If one of your twins is born with a genetic disorder or develops a childhood leukemia, the cord blood likely contains the same code that caused the problem in the first place. It cannot be used to treat either twin or any other person.
Cord blood cells from one healthy twin can be used to treat your other twin or another ill child, as long as the two are a good match. But this benefit is greatest when the two children have a slightly different genetic makeup. This means that if your twins are identical (monozygotic), they will make poor blood donors for one another. If your twins are fraternal (dizygotic), they have the same chance as any other sibling of making a good donor for the other twin. Regardless of whether twins are identical or fraternal, cord blood could be used to treat another ill sibling.
cord blood banking if an infant has a full sibling with a malignant or genetic condition treatable with cord blood transplantation. These conditions include:
- Leukemia
- Immune deficiencies, such as severe combined immune deficiency (SCID)
- Lymphoma (Hodgkin's and non-Hodgkin's)
- Aplastic anemia
- Sickle cell anemia
- Krabbe's disease
- Thalassemia
- Other rare diseases
Even so, a brother or a sister has only a 25% chance of being a perfect genetic match. Thus, a sibling may require a bone marrow or cord blood transplant from an unrelated donor.
A cord blood banking if there is a family history of malignant or genetic conditions that might benefit from cord blood stem cells. But keep in mind that to find a suitable match for any type of transplant, 70% must look outside their family.
Families are encouraged to donate stem cells to a public bank to help others.
If you do decide to bank your baby’s cord blood, there’s one more thing to keep in mind: It’s best not to make it a last-minute decision. You should coordinate with the bank before your baby is born so nothing is left to chance.
No one knows how stem cells will be used in the future, but researchers hope they may be used to treat many conditions, like Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart failure, spinal cord damage, and others.
It's possible that storing your child's cord blood cells now may be useful one day in combating these diseases. For now, these treatments are only theories. It's also not clear if stem cells from cord blood -- as opposed to stem cells from other sources -- will be useful in these potential treatments.