Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Once considered a waste product that was discarded with the placenta, umbilical cord blood is now known to be rich in potentially life-saving stem cells. When used for stem cell transplantation, umbilical cord blood offers several distinct advantages over bone marrow or peripheral stem cells.

In many parts of the world, including India, private companies have aggressively marketed the need for the storage of umbilical cord blood. The marketing definitely plays on the guilt of parents and grandparents who feel that if they do not store their baby’s cord blood, they have not done something essential to safeguard the baby’s future.

Public cord blood banks, like the one recently opened in Chennai, allow this valuable product to be stored and used by anybody, much like blood banks store units of blood which can be used to save anyone’s life, not just the donor’s.

After the placenta has been removed from the uterus, the cord is cleaned and a needle is inserted into a cord blood vessel. About 60 to 120 millilitres of blood is obtained. Once the cord blood is collected, it is sent for testing and processing. Lab technicians run the blood through a battery of tests, extract the stem cells from the sample, and prepare the sample for the freezer, where the cells remain until they are needed.

In India, collection, processing and storage of cord blood in a private company can cost between Rs. 80,000 and Rs. 1,00,000 to the parents.

The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Academy of Pediatrics categorically state that in most cases private storage of cord blood is unwise. No accurate estimates exist of the likelihood that children will need their own stored cells, but estimates range from 1 in 2,700 to 1 in 200,000. It is interesting to note that in seven years of operation, one of the leading private cord blood storage banks in America has not used a single unit of stored blood!

Healthy families should not succumb to marketing ploys because the likelihood of ever using the blood is rare, future medical uses for it are uncertain and storage standards can be lacking.

Approximately 7,000 stem cell transplants have been done around the world. The vast majority of cord blood stem cell transplants have been done using cells from unrelated donors from public banks. About 300 transplants have involved sibling donors while approximately 14 have been done using a child’s own cells.

Most parents are terrified that their child might develop a condition in the future that might be only curable with its own stem cells. They are particularly concerned about genetic diseases or leukemia. But if a child has a genetic disease or childhood leukemia, his or her own cord blood would be useless in treating it because the cells will be chromosomally or genetically abnormal. A sibling’s cord blood or an unrelated donor’s cord blood might help

For marketing purposes, many companies are stating that cord blood stem cells will be useful in the future for treating diabetes, heart disease, nerve diseases and arthritis. There is no scientific basis for this at present. What is more concerning is that the amount of stem cells present in the unit of cord blood stored will not be sufficient for treating an adult. Using two or three units from a public cord blood bank might be more efficient. Stem cell transplants from a donor are as effective as from the same individual. Donating the cord blood to a public blood bank will be more useful and cost-effective than storing it for one individual.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail