Hi, I’m Francesca and I’m here to tell you a little bit about banking cord blood. I don’t know a lot about it, but I can definitely walk you through some of the pros and cons why people are doing it.
Basically they are stem cells in the umbilical cord, and so after a baby is born, they can basically freeze the blood from that umbilical cord and use it for any sort of medical condition that may arise in which stem cells would be useful. I think it is kind of controversial because basically there have been very little studies done where a person is treated with their own stem cells. It’s also really expensive and there has been some criticism about it being sort of the new fad for like banking babies’ cord blood, like live to the future, thousands of dollars. At the same time there is a lot to be said about you could do and what you could treat with it.
I think that it probably makes sense for people who have a family medical history of things like leukemia that can be treated with stem cells, but beyond that, maybe it’s a little bit hysterical. I don’t know. I don’t have kids.
So basically they have to clamped on the umbilical cord very early in order to do this process, and so that is actually one of the risks that can cause to the mother, but it has to happen immediately at birth. Another thing that is interesting about cord blood is that those stem cells are not naive stem cells. They actually have it differentiated which means that they can be used for all different kinds of things as it supposed to be and specifically in particular—they have not become—they have been more naive than the other stem cell, I think. I am not an expert.
The one other thing that’s interesting is that, even though are very potent and they can become any kind of cell in the body which is great. There are enough of them in cord blood, and so they are really good for treating at this point, like childhood cancers or pretty much out of leukemia, but they’re not going to be effective, there’s not going to be enough of them to use for an adult. And for adult, you’re still going to have to get blood transfusion from other adults.
I am Francesca and those were some tips and information on banking your baby’s cord blood.
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