Banking Cord Blood

Every expectant mother should add banking cord blood to her to do list for her baby’s birth. Banking cord blood is important because it could save a baby’s life at some point in the future.

Cord blood is the blood found in a baby’s umbilical cord right after birth. This blood should be saved because it is very rich in stem cells. These stem cells can be used for a wide variety of medical treatments involving transplants.

Scientists believe that stem cells could someday be used to grow tissue and organs to replace tissue and organs damaged or destroyed by injury or disease. This new tissue could potentially used to treat a wide variety of conditions including brain injuries and juvenile diabetes.

Banking a baby’s cord blood will ensure that a baby’s stem cells will be available for use in such medical treatments in the future. Doctors in the future could use the baby’s stem cells to develop treatments or grow tissue specifically for that individual.

Transplants and Rejection

Banking cord blood when a baby is born is important because of the way the human body works. Many transplants including organ transplants and bone marrow transplants because the body literally rejects the new tissue doctors insert into it.

This occurs because the body’s immune system thinks that the transplanted material is an invader and actually attacks it. Currently the only way to make transplants work is to give a person drugs that suppress the immune system. Such drugs can keep a body from rejecting a transplant but they can put a person at risk for infections because they weaken the immune system.

If the material transplanted into a person were a genetic match for the individual such rejection would not occur. Some scientists believe that replacement organs, bone marrow or tissue could be one day grown from stem cells.

If a person’s cord blood were available, doctors could potentially grow replacement tissue that couldn’t be rejected by the body. The new tissue wouldn’t be rejected because it was a genetic match for the person.

Banking Cord Blood

A woman can ensure that her baby’s cord blood is available to doctors in the future by having it banked today. If it is properly frozen, cord blood can be stored for a very long time so the stem cells in it could be available years or even decades in the future.

Most hospitals in the United States now offer cord blood banking. A woman should ask about it before her baby is born. She should also ask for private banking of cord blood which ensure that her baby’s cord blood is set aside for future use.