Cord Blood Can Treat Over 80 Life-threatening Diseases: What Diseases Can Be Treated?
Earlier, after the delivery of your baby, the umbilical cord used to be treated as medical waste. However, with the advent of cord blood banking and cord blood stem therapy, the scenario seems to be completely changed.
Basically, cord blood is a great source of haematopoietic (blood-forming) stem cells, which has the potential to differentiate into different cell types – red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma, and platelets.
Research has it that, the treatment of Fanconi Anaemia was believed to be the first successful cord blood stem cell transplant. That’s not it:
- Red blood cells which have foetal haemoglobin in them are used for newborn’s blood transfusion. In fact, umbilical cord red blood cells are used to treat sickle cell anaemia.
- While blood cells, whose main job is to save your baby’s body from injuries are good for childhood cancer. These stem cells are also used to fight infection.
- Platelets play an important role in blood clotting and healing after an injury and are extremely important in regenerative medicine.
- Plasma is the core of cord blood and like white blood cells, platelet-rich plasma can be used to treat cancer.
Additionally, cord blood stem cells have proven themselves instrumental in treating inherited metabolic disorders and deficiencies of the immune system. Umbilical cord blood contains natural killer cells, a lower absolute number of T-cells, and various types of stem cells and progenitor cells.
Unlike embryonic stem cells, haematopoietic stem cells are not pluripotent, but they are being researched with the goal of using them beyond blood and immune disorders.
In fact, these are some of the reasons that allow expecting parents like you, to include cord blood banking in your birth plan. You can either save your baby’s cord blood in a public cord blood bank or in private cord blood bank to reap the benefits later on.