Cord Blood

Review of Cord Blood Banks.

noreply@blogger.com (Lacie) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 05:35:00 +0000

Cord Blood Registry

CBR owns their own laboratory some 80,000 square feet, the largest processing facility in the world, so they say. They use the newest technologies available and all quality control measures are up to or exceeds FDA standards. Cord Blood Registry is certified by the American Association of Blood Banks and the CLIA.

The Cord Blood Registry has processed and stored more cord blood than any other bank of its kind, due largely to its size. CBR has more experience providing cord blood for use in treatment than any other family bank, again due to its size. To this day they have helped more than 156 families use their cord blood stem cells for lifesaving transplants and other therapies. CBR has not had any errors in the handling during the release of cord blood units to their respective families, meaning all units have been viable.

CBR has Experience
CBR is well equipped to handle your needs
CBR is the only one to off two way to save stem cells (in their market)
CBR has many years of storing cord blood for potential clients

We have to remember Cord Blood Registry is an extremely large company in terms of the product they handle. This reason alone makes them top of their market, think Wal-Mart. But that does not mean they do business the same way, think child labor. These are the facts of the Cord Blood Registry remember to do your own research so you can make an informed decision when it's that time!

Lymphoma and you.

noreply@blogger.com (Lacie) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 18:53:00 +0000

The lymph system is made up of many cells and organs, including the lymph nodes, spleen, thymus gland, and liver. Lymphoma is the proper term for cancer in the lymph system. The Lymph system produces "B-Cells" and "T-Cells," the cells that make up your body’s immune system. Since these cells move between the lymphatic and circulatory system while fighting infections and viruses, lymphomas are blood-related cancers.

There are two types of Lymphomas:

Hodgkin's Lymphoma
Non-hodgkin's Lymphomas (NHL)

T-Cell lymphomas make up 20% of lymphomas, NHL would bring up the other 80%.

Signs and Symptoms:

swollen lymph nodes in the neck, armpit, or groin; usually painless
fever and/or night sweats
unexplained weight loss
fatigue
chest pain
loss of appetite is less common symptom of some more aggressive lymphomas of the GI tract

These are pretty general symptoms and I wouldn't be alarmed. Looking at that list, maybe I have it? If you think you have Hodgkin's disease you should be looked at by a doctor, there are no identifying flags that point at Lymphoma as symptoms.

Stem cells and cord blood.

noreply@blogger.com (Lacie) — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 16:28:00 +0000

       The decision to donate a newborn's umbilical-cord blood is, for many expectant mothers, a simple checkmark on a long list of prenatal choices. But for Noel Beninati, one donor's checkmark offered a lifeline. Last May, Beninati received a transplant of stem cells harvested from the blood of an infant's discarded umbilical cord at Boston's Dana Farber Institute, to help him fight a rare blood condition called myelodysplastic syndrome. After doctors couldn't find a matching bone-marrow donor, the 58-year-old New Yorker says his last hope was cord blood, a solution that would not exist without parental donors. New parents, Beninati urges, "must understand the importance this decision can mean for the public good."

       State legislators agree. More and more have introduced or passed laws to mandate that doctors and hospitals educate expectant parents about the possibility of cord-blood donation. Doctors can now treat some 70 diseases using stem cells harvested from cord blood, and states including Oklahoma, Michigan and Arkansas are considering bills to fund the establishment of additional local public cord-blood banks and collection centers. "Ideally, we want people to see this as a public service akin to blood or organ donation," says Oklahoma state senator Jay Paul Gumm, who has sponsored such legislation. "Something that they automatically think to sign up for."

       Despite the claim by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) that more than 10,000 new patients each year could benefit from cord-blood stem-cell transplants, most umbilical cords currently end up as medical waste. Today, a matching donor from the national registry is found only about 25% of the time, and many patients die waiting. So far, doctors have found the most promise in cord blood for conditions such as blood cancers, leukemia and sickle-cell anemia. But last year, an ongoing study at the University of Florida showed cord-blood cells could also be effective at treating type-1 diabetes. Many doctors also believe that these transplants will eventually prove useful in regenerative medicine, helping patients suffering from heart disease, spinal bifida or even traumatic brain injuries.

       "The potential is so significant," says Dr. Jennifer Willert, a stem-cell transplant specialist at the Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego. "Not to have families know about the possibility of banking, that's tragic."
Cord blood has several advantages over bone marrow transplants, the procedure to which it is most often compared. The first is that cord blood is collected without risk to the mother or the newborn, whereas a bone marrow donor faces surgery and general anesthesia. Cord-blood transplants also require a less perfect match in unrelated people, opening up a broader spectrum of potential donors, and recipients' bodies are less likely to reject a transplant.

       The U.S. currently only has about 70,000 units of cord blood stored at its 20 public cord-blood banks. That's largely because few parents are aware that public donation is even a possibility. Instead, if a mother-to-be has heard of cord-blood banking at all, she's considered private banking, or the storage of her infant's own cord blood, an option costing up to $3,000 plus annual fees. Parents generally see private banking as an insurance policy should their child or a sibling fall ill later in life. Public donation does not guarantee availability to the donor's family should the need later arise. "If you don't save the cells [privately], they can never be fully yours," says Dave Zitlow, a spokesman for San Francisco-based Cord Blood Registry, the world's largest cord-blood private bank.

       But both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association encourage, in most cases, public donation over private banking. That's because a child has only between one in 1,000 and one in 200,000 chance of needing an infusion of his own cord blood later in life. More public contributions would expand the ethnic diversity in the donor pool, which now predominantly favors Caucasian recipients. What's more, many conditions treated today with cord-blood stem cells are most successful when the donor is not related to the recipient, says Dr. Kent Christopherson, a hematologist at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center. "Odds are you'll never need your own cord blood, but actually your neighbor's," Christopherson says. "So advocating for public donation is in fact a way to help yourself."

       A recent NMDP survey showed that 95% of new mothers say had they known about public cord-blood donation, they would have donated. Says Kristi Kirkpatrick, a manager from Pittsburgh who is expecting her second child in March. "To be able to save a life with something that'd normally go in the trash?" she says. "That's not a difficult decision for anyone to make."

The original version of this article misidentified Dave Zitlow as a spokesman for the company CryoCell. He actually works for Cord Blood Registry.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1717283,00.html#ixzz13CSWcQCB

What is cord blood banking?

noreply@blogger.com (Lacie) — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 02:24:00 +0000

Cord blood banking is the storage of your child's cord blood either in a public or private cord blood storage bank. Cord blood banks have developed since the mid to late 1990s in response to the potential for cord blood transplants in treating diseases of the blood and immune systems. But, cord blood banking isn't routine in hospital or home deliveries - it's a procedure you have to choose and plan for beforehand, so be sure to consider your decision carefully before delivery day.

If you donate your child’s cord blood, it goes into a public bank where it is stored for anyone to use. If you privately store your child’s cord blood, it is always available for your child or family to use. When the cord blood is received by the storage facility, it is tested to see if it contains enough blood-forming cells. If it passes this initial test, it is HLA typed, frozen and stored in a liquid nitrogen freezer. Most private facilities use a cryogenic controlled-rate freezing process for long-term storage and special cryo bags that have separate storage compartments. If you do not save your baby's cord blood, it will be discarded after birth.

Expecting a baby?

noreply@blogger.com (Lacie) — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 00:03:00 +0000

Many soon to be parents have heard of cord blood banking and want to know what the benefits are and what the drawbacks are and if it is worth while. Your OB/GYNs and or midwife is one resource for information. I'm writing this blog to show an unbiased view of the pros and cons of cord blood banking.

What is cord blood?

After a baby is born and the umbilical cord is cut, some blood remains in the blood vessels of the placenta and the portion of the umbilical cord that remains attached to it. After the baby is born, he or she will no longer need this extra blood. This blood is the placental blood or umbilical cord blood.

Cord blood is collected because it contains stem cells, including hematopoietic cells, which can be used to treat hematopoietic and genetic disorders.
Cord blood contains all the normal elements of blood - red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and plasma. But it is also rich in hematopoietic (blood-forming) stem cells, similar to those found in bone marrow. This is why cord blood can be used for transplantation as an alternative to bone marrow.

Cord blood is being used increasingly on an experimental basis as a source of stem cells, as an alternative to bone marrow. Cord Blood transplants have also been performed for patients with genetic or metabolic diseases. More than 80 different diseases have been treated to date with unrelated cord blood transplants.

Scientists are investigating the possibility that stem cells in cord blood may be able to replace cells of other tissues such as nerve or heart cells. Whether cord blood can be used to treat other kinds of diseases will be learned from this research. Although the cord blood does contain stem cells, there are generally not enough stem cells in one unit of cord blood to treat an adult patient. The placenta is a much better source of stem cells since it contains up to ten times more stem cells than cord blood.