Umbilical cord stem cells advantages and disadvantages
After birth, umbilical stem cells come from the umbilical cord and placental blood. Cord stem cells can be harvested after a child’s birth and be used later on for medical purposes. It doesn’t affect child/childbirth/safety of mother or a kid in any way and is entirely safe.
Umbilical cord blood cells are used to treat about 80 health conditions and are used primarily in experimental treatments of cerebral palsy and type I diabetes. These cells specialize in renewing and repairing or replacing damaged cells and sick.
These stem cells look like adult stem cells because they are specific to certain tissues. Stem cells collected most temporally to form different types of cells are readily available and inexpensive. Scientists also harvested from stem cells:
- Various fetal tissues
- A fetus
- Amnion / placenta
- Umbilical cord
- Umbilical matrix cells
These days Umbilical stem cells are only approved for use in “hematopoietic stem cell transplant” procedures. These procedures are used in patients with disorders affecting the hematogenous system. This transplant is used for patients who require regeneration or reabsorption of hematopoietic cells.
Examples of these disorders include:
- Leukemia
- Lymphoma
- Sickle cell
- Viscott-Aldrich syndrome
Possible benefits of umbilical cord blood stem cells include:
- Has the ability to treat a variety of blood diseases
- Match the recipient more closely
- Less likely to decline
- Supplies prepared and did not harm mother or child
Some of the disadvantages of umbilical cord blood stem cells include,
- The stem cells might not be enough to treat an adult with a collection.
- After it’s transplanted once, no more cells can be harvested from this source, so it’s a one-time process.
- It takes longer to transplant stem cells from umbilical cord blood than a bone marrow transplant.
- As there are no national umbilical cord blood collection and storage system, it would be harder to get accurate information.
To date, some hospitals collect umbilical cord blood for later use and some only at certain times of the day, which limits the supply. Some supplies are then retained for use by the donor.
Researchers continue to look for alternatives to provide a larger supply and consider whether there is some possibility of using cord blood from more than one donor per patient.