Introduction
The blood that remains in the placenta and umbilical cord after a baby is delivered is known and called cord blood. You may either keep it privately for your family’s exclusive usage or donate it to a public cord blood bank.
An illness that can be treated with cord blood cells can also be treated with cord blood. The stem cell-rich blood that passes through the placenta and umbilical cord is called cord blood.
According to FDA approval, leukemia, lymphoma, and sickle cell disease are just a few of the blood and immune system problems that can be treated using cord blood from a donor.
Certain private businesses are promoting this beneficial fluid as a biological insurance policy against conditions including autism, cerebral palsy, Alzheimer’s, and others.
In this article, let us understand and explore why you must invest in cord blood.
1. Treating More Than 80 Fatal Diseases
Since a French doctor performed the first cord blood stem cell transplant in 1988, there have been more than 40,000 procedures.
More than 80 distinct life-threatening disorders, including leukemia, lymphoma, and sickle cell anemia, are now being treated with cord blood stem cells saving millions of lives.
The use of cord blood stem cells in novel fields of regenerative medicine to perhaps treat spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy, autism, Type 1 diabetes, and other conditions is also proving to be essential.
Most conditions on the proven therapy list are hereditary illnesses in families. Hematopoietic stem cells are cord blood’s most common stem cells (HSCs).
Our blood and immune system are made up of “blood-forming” known as HSCs. These stem cells can “rebuild” a fresh, healthy blood supply when employed in transplants.
2. To Save A Family Member
To determine if the recipient’s stem cells are compatible with the donor’s, HLA typing – cord blood compatibility testing is employed.
The donor’s own stem cells cannot be utilized to treat genetic illnesses since the baby’s cord blood contains the genetic abnormalities that cause these disorders. A donor is frequently a healthy first-degree relative, such as a parent, sibling, or kid.
For certain stem cell transplants, a perfect match of all HLA markers is not necessary. Graft-versus-host disease, the main cause of mortality after transplant surgery, can be brought on by mismatched cells.
Compared to adult stem cells, stem cells from cord blood are half as likely to be rejected and carry fewer infectious illnesses.
Compared to bone marrow transplants, cord blood transplants (including mismatched ones) have a lower chance of developing GVHD.
Allogeneic transplants are necessary when a patient has an illness with a genetic foundation, such as bone marrow failure, cancer, sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, immune deficiency syndromes, and genetic metabolic abnormalities.
3. Feasibility Of Banking
The purpose of this study was to assess how long-term cryopreservation affected cord blood’s quality.
The 127 adult recipients of single-unit cord blood transplants who developed blood-related malignancies between April 2007 and September 2014 were retrospectively examined in the research. Before the transplant, it also examined the 95 cord blood units.
To handle and store cord blood for allogeneic use, cord blood banks public and private must register with Health Canada and be subject to recurring inspections (use for someone other than the donor).
Make inquiries about your bank. Learn how long the facility has been banking cord blood and what criteria banking complies with in the professional world.
As well as the volume kept and the survival rate of those cells, inquire about the storage facility and its requirements.
The placenta, which is no longer connected to the infant at this stage, is where cord blood is extracted, not the newborn’s umbilical cord stump.
The cord blood may be collected in just ten minutes. The cord blood is then placed in a freezer with liquid nitrogen to be kept indefinitely.
4. To Encourage And Enable Further Research
As we already mentioned, the importance and potential of cord blood to treat several regenerative and other health issues, a lot of its capabilities, are still unknown to mankind.
However, to understand and derive all of its possibilities, it is important to do extensive research on this matter.
Therefore, storing your baby’s cord blood in a public bank gives researchers the scope to explore and study cord blood and its benefits further. The more we store cord blood in a public bank, the more we’ll get to know about its utility.
Invest In Cord Blood Banking
Depending on circumstances like your insurance plan. This might increase the cost. Moms are required by both public and private cord blood banks to get tested for different illnesses (including hepatitis and HIV).
Private cord blood banking costs money, whereas public cord blood banking is free. Aside from that, you’ll spend $100 to $175 a year for upkeep and storage.
