Life is extremely precious and no one is guaranteed anything. Injuries, neurological disorders, and autoimmune disorders can make life extremely difficult. If a person has any of these conditions, he or she can be put on a transplant list to be given a second chance. Stem cells are found in the umbilical cord of a newborn baby and they have been used to treat over 80 diseases. Banking your cord blood is vital because it will give your baby a perfect match for transplant if something should happen later. Your baby’s cord blood could be a possible match for you and for the rest of your family, too. Our new eBook, the Latest Clinical Update for Stem Cell Therapies, is designed to show you how umbilical cord blood can treat nearly 20 different diseases and disorders. This is just a small insight into the importance of cord blood and why banking can save a family member’s life. With each informed person, more lives are saved. The lifesaving power of umbilical cord blood stem cells and the regenerative healing of cord tissue is no longer a secret. As stem cell treatments and research advance, more and more parents are opting to bank their newborn baby’s cord blood and tissue. Find out how stem cells are being used in medicine today. Umbilical cord blood is the blood remaining in the cord after your baby has been born and the cord has been cut and clamped. It contains valuable stem cells that can be used in a variety of medical treatments such as regenerating the immune system after chemotherapy. Stem cells are known as ‘the building blocks of life’. They have the unique ability to become other types of cells in the body such as the blood, nerve cells, muscle, bone, and cartilage. Why are umbilical stem cells so valuable? Cord blood stem cells can only be collected at birth, so it is important to make the decision to do cord tissue storage several weeks before your due date. Cord Tissue stored at birth have many advantages – they are readily available for your family if needed, they are considered to be the ‘youngest and freshest’ type of stem cell, and importantly there is a greater potential of a stem cell match between siblings. Stem cells from the cord blood have been used for more than 20 years for the treatment of a number of disorders of the blood such as leukemia, lymphoma and thalassemia, which previously had been treated with bone marrow. The umbilical cord blood collection process After the safe delivery of your child, your obstetrician or midwife cleans the umbilical cord (with the materials provided in the Cells4Life kit) and inserts the blood bag needle into the umbilical vein. The blood flows into the bag by gravity. The blood bag tubing is clamped, sealed and labeled to await courier collection. The whole process takes only a few minutes and causes no pain for mother or baby.
Darren Keast is the author of this article on Cord Blood Stem Cells. Find more information, about Cord blood banking here