Guest guest Posted November 26, 2004 Report Share Posted November 26, 2004 Wait till they hear about placenta..... doug The Associated Press Umbilical cord blood, now used mostly to treat children with leukemia, could save thousands of adults with the disease each year who cannot find bone marrow donors, two large studies indicate. A European study found that those who got cord blood were just as likely to be free of leukemia two years later as those who got marrow. A United States study looking at three- year survival yielded results almost as promising. Leukemia patients often undergo radiation or chemotherapy to kill their cancerous white blood cells, a treatment that wipes out their immune systems, too. To restore their immune systems, doctors give these patients an infusion of bone marrow or umbilical cord blood, both of which contain stem cells capable of developing into every kind of blood cell. Cord blood offers an important advantage over marrow that makes it particularly valuable for use in transplants: its stem cells are less likely to attack the recipient's body. That allows a wider margin of error in matching up donors and recipients. Up until now, though, cord blood has been considered suitable only for children because each donation has only about one-tenth the number of stem cells in a marrow donation. The two new studies, published yesterday in The New England Journal of Medicine, suggest that is not a serious impediment. In the European study, involving 682 patients, about a third of both those who got matched marrow and those who got cord blood that did not quite match their own tissues were alive after two years. In the American study of 601 patients, about a third of those who got matched marrow were leukemia-free after two years, compared with about one- fifth of those who got cord blood or unmatched marrow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted November 27, 2004 Report Share Posted November 27, 2004 Wait till they hear about placenta..... doug >>>Sorry to burst your bubble but the cord blood is used to extract cells after total bone marrow radiation and chemo. Its just that the stem cells are there, its not the blood Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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