cord blood

The AABB, the American Associaion of Blood Banks at http://www.aabb.org, reported today that mismatched cord blood can benefit children as follows:

When parents are considering banking their cord blood, they often ask if there is a charge to retrieve the cord blood. There should be no cost to retrieve the cord blood. What a cord blood bank might charge you for is shipping of the sample. Since the sample needs to be shipped frozen, you will need to rent a portable nitrogen tank to ship the sample. This money is not for removing the sample from storage, it is a rental fee for the tank. You should always check with your cord blood bank to make sure they will not charge you a handling fee for removing the cord blood from storage.

Umbilical cord blood stem cells may one day be used to build heart valves for children born with heart defects. Ralf Sodian of University Hospital Munich, who led the study, presented at the American Heart Association annual meeting that these valves would grow with the child, eliminating the need for ongoing surgical intervention to replace outgrown heart valves.

Many parents who are considering storing their infant's cord blood, often wonder how long the cord blood can be saved before it starts to deteriorate. Banking cord blood is a new enough procedure that scientists don't have an answer to that question yet.

The data for cord blood involves specimens that have been frozen for 10-12 years. In those specimens, there seems to be no deterioration. This doesn't say that cord blood will not last longer, it just says that there has never been any research conducted on specimens that have been stored longer.

Parents who are deciding whether to bank their baby’s cord blood have so many sources of information, but often don’t know what to believe. While cord blood bank sites can be valuable sources of information, they are first and foremost developed to sell the company’s services so might be considered biased. There is an unbiased source of information that can help parents to determine if cord blood banking is right for them.

Hello and welcome to our new cord blood blog. Here is where you can find the latest information on our services, the latest advances in cord blood banking, and general information about the industry. M.A.Z.E. Cord Blood Laboratories sets the industry standard for cord blood banking. Whether you are using donor sperm, using a surrogate, or adopting a newborn, M.A.Z.E. can help you bank your baby's cord blood.

Cord Blood Registry (CBR) announced that - for the second year in a row - a record number of cord blood stem cell collections stored at CBR have been needed for medical use by the individual child from whom they were collected. In 2007, a total of 16 cord blood collections stored at CBR were requested for medical use. Children diagnosed with cerebral palsy, juvenile diabetes and a rare immune system disorder will benefit from their own stem cells.