Cord Blood Transplant – A Better Alternative to Bone Marrow Transplant

As statistics render evidence of more and more positive outcomes of cord blood transplants, a greater importance is now being placed on cord blood donation. Blood and immune system related diseases were the preliminary ailments in which cord blood cell treatment was started.

Now the transplant is a tool to combat more than seventy diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, spinal cord injuries, some forms of blindness and other diseases that have originated from the bone marrow. Statistics have published that nearly 110,000 people are been diagnosed with these types of diseases each year in the United States. Because of the painful procedures and other obstacles associated with bone marrow transplants, approximately 15,000 people discard the transplant treatment that they require be recover. Assiduous cord blood research trials are being made to extract further healing benefits latent in the umbilical cords of babies and put this to use in curing other severe diseases.

Why Cord Blood Transplants Are Better Alternatives To Bone Marrow Transplants?

The availability of matching donors is the main setback that bone marrow transplants patients face. There are cases when the patients even succumb to the disease while waiting for the ideal match. To further the list of disadvantages, the bone marrow collection procedure is quite painful and it takes a long time to see any positive result of bone marrow treatment.

Cord blood transplant treatments have shown more benefits than bone marrow transplant treatments, these are -

Cord blood cells show greater chances of HLA matching between donors and patients. Availability of umbilical cord blood stem cell makes it more accessible in need of transplants than bone marrow stem cells. The patient no longer needs to wait for a donor; he can be his own donor if his cord blood had been preserved after his birth.
Since the stem cells found in umbilical cords are the most primitive cells, therefore, when transplanted to the patients, these bring about lesser threat for graft-versus-host-disease [GVRD] which is a probable risk involved in bone marrow transplant.
The harvesting and collecting process entails zero pain and risk for the donor, whereas, bone marrow collection process causes intense pain to both donor and user.