New parents can now pay to preserve the rich blood from the placenta and umbilical cord to be used instead of a bone-marrow transplant if their child develops leukemia or some other disease.
About a half cup of blood from the afterbirth will be frozen at a blood bank for up to 10 years through a service being offered by Magee-Womens Hospital in conjunction with a Connecticut medical research company.Scientists believe afterbirth blood, known as cord blood, is as effective as bone marrow transplants in fighting blood and immune-system diseases.
The blood, typically thrown away with the afterbirth, looks like other blood but contains more blood-producing stem cells. A sick child would receive a transfusion of his own afterbirth blood, which would move into his bone marrow and replace diseased cells.
Bone-marrow transplants, a widely used therapy against leukemia, are more costly, time-consuming and painful than the cord-blood technique.
The commercial program in Pittsburgh began this week with an unidentified mother. Each treatment costs $1,500 plus $75 for each year of storage.
Physicians have privately arranged to store afterbirth blood in special cases for several years. The New York Blood Center in New York City has 1,200 samples of afterbirth blood as part of a federal research project.