Stem cells are currently used for treating some diseases, and offer hope of a future cure for many of today's incurable diseases. Parents are now able to have blood or cells from the umbilical cord of their newborn child stored for the child's future disease treatments. This article gives an overview of the process of stem cell storage.
Stem cell storage is becoming a more and more popular choice among parents of newborn children, and is relatively common in the USA. It is now becoming increasingly common in the UK. These cells have been used for bone marrow transplants since 1988. They may, in the future, offer a cure for many diseases for which there is presently no cure. Conditions and injuries such as heart disease, brain damage, deafness, blindness and diabetes. Even hair loss and missing teeth could be treatable in the future.
The idea behind storage of your child's stem cells is that they will have a supply of compatible cell types to be used in the treatment of any disease, injury or condition that they might suffer from in the future. Obviously, this also depends on advances being made in medical procedures using these cells. If a cure for this condition has not been discovered by the time the child has developed it, then they are of no use for treatment purposes. The current range of conditions treatable with stem cells is relatively small, however, significant time and money is being put into this area of research and future cures seem to be highly likely.
The storage process begins at the birth of the child, using an umbilical cord blood collection kit supplied by the cord blood storage company. A healthcare professional (a phlebotomist, doctor, nurse etc.) collects blood from the umbilical cord using the collection kit. The process is painless for both mother and baby, and is completely harmless to both. The blood is then transported to the laboratory for processing by the technicians. In some laboratories the whole blood is frozen, but other laboratories extract the stem cells before freezing. The sample is frozen using liquid nitrogen at around minus 190 degrees Celsius, and can be stored in the storage tank at this temperature indefinitely. Some storage tanks use liquid phase nitrogen and some use vapour phase nitrogen. Vapour phase nitrogen appears to be increasingly popular as there has been some evidence of liquid phase nitrogen transferring infectious diseases from one sample to others.
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