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Labor is over, the baby is in your arms, and your physician or midwife is waiting patiently for the placenta to detach. Your labor coach, however, may have one more task to complete at this point—arranging to ship the blood your caregiver just extracted from the umbilical cord after your baby was born. The umbilical cord blood (blood remaining in the cord after birth) has been found to have an abundant supply of stem cells, the same cells that are harvested from bone marrow when a person needs a bone marrow transplant. These stem cells are like the "mother" of other cells, with the ability to reproduce new red and white blood cells and platelets. The procedure to collect the blood is painless to both mom and baby, and generally requires only a few minutes of your caregiver's time following the birth of your child. After this blood is collected by the hospital staff, it is packaged and shipped to a cord blood bank where it will be frozen for future use. Because umbilical cord blood contains the same cells as bone marrow, researchers have found that it can be used to treat many life-threatening diseases such as leukemia, lymphomas and anemias. Research is also currently underway in using stem cells in the treatment of such conditions as breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, lupus and HIV, and in gene therapy to treat conditions such as diabetes. The stem cells are a perfect match for the newborn, and there is up to a 50% chance of a match for a biological sibling or the mother. The first umbilical cord blood transplant was done in 1988 with the successful transplant of a newborn's umbilical cord blood into her older brother to treat his Fanconi's anema. To date, there have been more than 1500 umbilical cord blood transplants worldwide with success that match or exceed that of bone marrow. Cord blood has also been found to cause less "graft vs. host disease" than bone marrow (graft versus host disease is the potentially life-threatening attack of the donor cells on the recipient's body). Parents can elect to store their newborn's cord blood for their own family's potential use, or can apply to donate it to a public bank for someone else's use there are 10-15,000 patients each year who search unsuccessfully for a bone marrow transplant. The costs of a search (up to $70,000.00) and the waiting time involved while searching can be life-threatening for the patient who is ill. Families with histories of leukemia, lymphoma, or other cancers or genetic disorders that may require a stem cell transplant may want to consider banking their newborn's umbilical cord blood for their own family's use. Other families with mixed ethnic backgrounds may also want to consider this option, since the National Marrow Donor Program's registry of potential donor typically has a very low percentage of donors with a mixed ethnic background (making a match less likely to be found). Parents who are adopting a newborn may also want to look at the benefits of private banking, as this may be the only biological link this child will have. Cost of private family cord blood banking may range from $300 to $1200 initially for enrollment and processing of the sample. Annual storage rates may vary from $50 to $100 per year. (Cord blood which has been stored for up to 15 years has been found to be viable for transplant.) Some cord blood banks offer a payment or financing plan, to help expectant parents or even grandparents who are giving this as a special gift to their new grandchild.
Kathy Sepesy, BSN, ACCE, is a certified childbirth educator who currently teaches childbirth classes at Indiana Hospital in Pennsylvania. She is also employed by Cord Blood Registry as a community educator. |
