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News from
Yahoo! News Dec. 10, 2007
Unrelated Cord Blood Helps Infants With
Metabolic Disorders
MONDAY, Dec. 10 (HealthDay News) --
Umbilical cord transplants from unrelated donors can benefit infants
born with life-threatening metabolic disorders such as
Hurler disease and
Krabbe leukodystrophy, according to a study led by Duke
University Medical Center researchers.
These kinds of metabolic disorders -- which cause organ failure and
early death -- occur in about one in 10,000 births. Without
intervention, most children with these disorders die before they
reach their first birthday.
Bone marrow transplantation has been the traditional way of treating
these disorders but can only be done using a matched donor. Both
bone marrow and umbilical cord blood transplant replace missing
enzymes and allow affected organs to develop more normally.
This study included 159 children with inherited metabolic disorders
who received unrelated donor cord blood transplants at Duke between
1995 and 2007.
"We saw that there were advantages to the unrelated cord blood
transplant," lead investigator Dr. Vinod Prasad, a pediatric
hematologist/oncologist at Duke, said in a prepared statement. "For
instance, cord blood is more readily available than bone marrow, and
there was a decreased risk of complications, including a lower
incidence of serious and potentially fatal graft-versus-host
disease, which occurs when donor cells perceive a recipient's
tissues and organs as foreign."
The study results also suggest that patients who receive cord blood
transplants while they're still relatively healthy have better
outcomes than those who receive bone marrow transplants.
"Over 88 percent of this subset of patients were alive one year
after their cord blood transplants, and close to 80 percent were
alive five years afterwards. One reason for this could be the cord
blood cells are immunologically more naive than the blood-forming
stem cells derived form bone marrow and therefore they may be more
adaptable and less reactive once they get into the patient's body,"
Prasad said.
The study was expected to be presented Monday at the American
Society of Hematology annual meeting in Atlanta.
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has
more about Krabbe disease.
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