How is cord blood used in medical treatments

When it is used, this may be called a cord blood transplant. More than 25, transplants using umbilical cord blood have taken place worldwide. Even better, umbilical cord blood is simple to donate. If you are considering donating, talk with your obstetrician or other member of your health care team. The cord blood bank your hospital works with needs to be contacted before the 34th week of pregnancy. You can also reach out to the nonprofit National Marrow Donor Program , which has as a nationwide bone marrow and cord blood registry, for a list of hospitals that work with cord banks.

You will have a series of simple health checks and then you will need to give your consent to the cord blood bank to donate and store the cord blood. Public donation from these communities is thus even more urgent to ensure that a stable inventory of high quality cord blood units is always available.

Register with us now. You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Please enable scripts and reload this page. Page Content. Treatment with Cord Blood. Cord Blood Transplants. Transplants Facilitated. Blood disorders. Developments using Cord Blood. It is currently recommended that cord blood is donated to public banks to increase the chance that people in need of a transplant can find an immunological match.

Whether or not to donate or bank cord blood is a personal decision, and you should always consult your doctor or a trusted medical professional. American Academy of Pediatrics. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The Parent's Guide to Cord Banking. An overview A precious and limited resource. In this section: Treating disease Finding your match Private banking vs.

Public donation How to donate Useful links Translations. Be informed. Start here. Advantages of using cord blood as a source of stem cells for transplantations.

Stem cells from cord blood have a lower risk of carrying blood borne infectious diseases, or of causing the potentially fatal immune response, graft-versus-host disease.

Cord blood may offer a matched source of stem cells for patients who cannot find an immunological match in bone marrow donor registries. Disadvantages of using cord blood as a source of stem cells for transplantations. Fewer blood stem cells are available from an umbilical cord sample than other sources. Two cords are typically required for each adult transplant.

The immune system recovers more slowly after a cord blood transplantation, putting the recipient at greater risk for certain infections.

There is a higher probability that a cord blood transplant will be unsuccessful. More cord blood sample cannot be obtained after the initial collection. Researchers are studying ways to expand the number of HSCs from cord blood in labs so that a single cord blood donation could supply enough cells for one or more HSC transplants.

Some controversial studies suggest that cord blood can help treat diseases other than blood diseases, but often these results cannot be reproduced. Researchers are actively investigating if cord blood might be used to treat various other diseases.

A large challenge facing many areas of medical research and treatments is correcting misinformation. Studies show it is highly unlikely that the cord blood will ever be used for their child.

However, clinicians strongly support donating cord blood to public blood banks. This greatly helps increase the supply of cord blood to people who need it. After a baby is born, cord blood is left in the umbilical cord and placenta. It is relatively easy to collect, with no risk to the mother or baby. It contains haematopoietic blood stem cells : rare cells normally found in the bone marrow. Haematopoietic stem cells HSCs can make every type of cell in the blood — red cells, white cells and platelets.

They are responsible for maintaining blood production throughout our lives. They have been used for many years in bone marrow transplants to treat blood diseases. There have been several reports suggesting that cord blood may contain other types of stem cells which can produce specialised cells that do not belong to the blood, such as nerve cells.

These findings are highly controversial among scientists and are not widely accepted. Cord blood is used to treat children with cancerous blood disorders such as leukaemia, or genetic blood diseases like Fanconi anaemia. In this way, cord blood offers a useful alternative to bone marrow transplants for some patients. It is easier to collect than bone marrow and can be stored frozen until it is needed. It also seems to be less likely than bone marrow to cause immune rejection or complications such as Graft versus Host Disease.

This means that cord blood does not need to be as perfectly matched to the patient as bone marrow though some matching is still necessary. However, cord blood transplants also have limitations. Treatment of adults with cord blood typically requires two units of cord blood to treat one adult.

Clinical trials using "double cord blood transplantation" for adults have demonstrated outcomes similar to use of other sources of HSCs, such as bone marrow or mobilized peripheral blood. Current studies are being done to expand a single cord blood unit for use in adults.

Cord blood can also only be used to treat blood diseases.