What is cord blood?

If you prick your belly button, you'll get cord blood. Just kidding. Now for the more technically-minded, I've done a little research on cord blood to share with you.

Cord blood or Placental blood is that small volume of blood (about 90ml) collected from the umbilical cord vein after the delivery of the baby and the umbilical cord cut. (This collection is done without disturbing the normal delivery practice and is not harmful to the mother and baby.)

The cord blood is rich in blood stem cells, normally found in the bone marow, which make all of your red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. Cord blood can be frozen and banked (there are many public cord blood banks in the world which store donors' cord bloods) for many years without loss of potency of the stem cells. Cord blood is therefore, an alternative source of stem cells for bone marrow transplant.

Bone marrow transplant (also called Stem cell transplant) is a curative treatment for many otherwise fatal diseases such as leukaemias, cancer, immune deficiencies, aplastic anaemias and thalassaemias. The problem with it is that the bone marrow donor has to be compatible and the white cells rigorously matched in their HLA types (the equivalent ABO blood groups on red cells). It is difficult to find a suitable compatible bone marrow donor. Cord blood stem cells, however, do not need such rigorous matching and in most cases, the donor and receipient are unrelated.

During the past decade, many cord blood transplants have been undertaken in both children and adults. It has reduced complications such as graft versus host disease (GVHD) but delayed engraftment. The success rate is related to the dose of cells transplanted in relation to the weight of the patient and also to the degree of HLA mismatch. In other words, HLA matching is still important but not as critical as for a bone marrow donor.

Hope I didn't bore or confuse you!