What is Cord Blood?
When a baby is born the umbilical cord is cut, it contains some blood contained in blood vessels of the placenta, and this blood vessel is not needed after the birth of the child. This blood is called Umbilical Cord Blood the literal meaning of cord blood is short.
Usage of Cord Blood:
Cord Blood is similar to the normal blood, it contains red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and plasma but in extra it contains hematopoietic stem cell that is similar to those found in bone marrow which is useful in transplantation. Its being used as a replacement of bone marrow, it’s used to treat diseases caused in blood and immune system. More than 60% of different diseases have been treated with Cord Blood Transplants.
Advantage of Cord Blood:
- Cord Blood is easy to collect and its risk free that is it involves very simple methods, which don’t have anything to deal with the care of baby or mother.
- Cord Blood is registered in advance for those who need it in future, it’s tested, and stored frozen and it will be ready to use at any instance and the test is completed with in 5-6 days.
- It doesn’t require any match this is the greatest advantage of Cord Blood, we can transplant it if 3 matches out of 6 where as bone marrow requires 6 matches out of 6.
- Cord Blood possess very few risk when being transplanted than in case of Bone marrow, even Cord blood produces virus named cytomegalovirus (lethal infection) but not that much infective.