Banking Cord Blood is a recent development in the history of medicine wherein the blood of the baby’s umbilical cord is stored in a bank similar to a blood bank. The umbilical cord blood is of utmost importance because it contains stem cells, the unique property of which is its ability to grow into any kind of cell. In other words, stem cells can be cultured and engineered to develop into nerve cells, bone cells and blood cells, anything as per the requirement.
The significance of the stem cells arises from the fact that these can be used to possibly find a cure for some serious diseases like blood cancer, immune system related illnesses, various genetic disorders and other rare diseases. For this reason most parents choose to store their child’s umbilical cord blood versus discarding it at the time of birth, while many others choose to donate it to the cord blood registry for research into finding cures for various diseases and studying human physiology.
Stem cell research is the latest topic of discussion and stem cell transplants have become very common since the 1990s. This is more important for those infants whose parents have a history of various genetic diseases or chronic illnesses. The cost of banking cord blood is worth the possible benefits, especially in such cases.
Advantages:
- Stem cells treatment is far superior technique to treat certain fatal diseases as compared to bone marrow transplant.
- Enough research data is available to substantiate the fact that 75% of patient’s bone marrow stem cells do not match with their donors. Banking cord blood imparts the perfect stem cell match and thus reduces the risk of rejection to a bare minimum.
- As per modern research data available, banking cord blood is helpful in the treatment of more than 45 diseases including metabolic and genetic disorders like blood cancer, sickle celled anemia etc.
Disadvantages:
- The cost of banking cord blood of an infant is undoubtedly the most expensive.
- According to statistics, one in 20,000 banking cord blood entries actually use the blood at a later date, which fortunately means there is not much need of banking cord blood and hopefully none will ever need a stem cell transplant in the years to come.
- The success rate of use of stem cells for heavier adults from banking cord blood sample is very low. These can only be used for an individual of about 115 pounds or less.
Eventually, there are two options to choose from; these are public and private facilities. In a public storage facility there is no fee charged but all identification aspects are removed from the storage batch, thus there is no guarantee of the authenticity of the sample made available at the time of need.
However, this novel concept of using cord blood for saving lives of countless people who have a family history of life-threatening diseases is gaining ground and is worth it in every way.