Blood Cord Registry

Parents that want to bank their newborn baby’s cord blood may have a question about how they will be able to use it in the future. A service called a blood cord registry provides the answer.

Although cord blood can be stored indefinitely it may not be available for use in treatments in the future. If cord blood is banked at a public cord bank it could be used for research or other purposes long before it is by the child whose parents banked it.

Even if the cord blood is still available when a child needs it, it could be impossible to find the material. Public cord blood banks may keep no records that can match cord blood to donors.

Why You Should Use a Cord Blood Registry

A blood cord registry is a service that keeps records of all the cord blood donors. This way cord blood can be matched to a particular individual.

The reason such a service is needed is that the human body can reject transplants including transplants of material grown from cord blood stem cells. A person will be far less likely to reject tissue grown from their own stem cells.

A blood cord registry is a means of making sure that a person’s cord blood is available for their use in the future. Cord blood that is listed in such a registry can be recovered when it is needed.

A parent that places cord blood and umbilical cord tissue in a blood cord registry can make sure their child’s stem cells will be available for use in the future. This could save a child’s life at some point because stem cells could be potentially used to treat a wide variety of diseases and conditions.

Regenerative Medicine

A fast growing field of medicine called regenerative medicine makes use of stem cells including umbilical cord stem cells. In regenerative medicine doctors use stem cells to grow new tissue to replace tissue destroyed or damaged by injury or disease.

Today doctors are growing new bone marrow for those who suffer from leukemia from stem cells. Replacing bone marrow in a person who has leukemia could theoretically cure the leukemia.

Other diseases that could be treated through this method include diabetes, juvenile diabetes and heart disease. Some kinds of injuries including brain injuries could also be treated through regenerative medicine. A doctor could treat brain injuries by growing new brain tissue to replace that destroyed or damaged in an accident.

Spinal cord injuries could also be treated in much the same way. There are some scientists who believe that new organs for people could also be grown through these methods.