This is a medical question! Please help.

Question

My boyfriends brother just found out he has bone marrow cancer. I'm pregnant with my boyfriend's baby. Would it be possible to use umbilical cord blood from the baby as a treatment for his sick brother? His brother would be the biological uncle.

Please, please, please help me.

thank you

Answer 1

Neither of those other people know what they are talking about.

Stem cell transplant (the medically correct term for a bone marrow transplant) completely replaces the bone marrow.  They give the patient high dose chemo and radiation to kill off the existing bone marrow,  Then the new stem cells are infused via IV, where they make their way to the bone by nature and engraft.  Then they start producing new blood.

The transplant can be done with 3 different sources of stem cells

A. actual marrow

B.  Peripheral Blood Stem Cells (pbsc) which is a type of white blood cell found in the circulating birth

C.  Cord Blood, which is the after birth donated after a live healthy birth.

Donors are matched by HLA (human leukocyte antigen) tissue type, NOT blood.  In fact, the donor can be a completly different blood type.  Since the transplant is replacing the marrow, which makes the blood, it is also replacing the blood.  So there is no reason to match by blood type.

Actual marrow and pbsc need to be matched very close.  Perfect 10/10 HLA match is best, 9/10 is ok, and 8/10 can be done but isnt recommended.  Siblings have a 1 in 4 chance of matching, and then parents and children at 1/8.  Beyond that, most insurance companies wont pay for testing because the chances go down to something like 1/1000.

Cord blood, while it still needs to be matched, doesnt have to be as close of a match.  For example, my donors were 6/10 match to me, and I engrafted sooner than expected.  A 6/10 match with actual maarrow or pbsc would never have engrafted.  So, a neice/nefew would have a better chance of cord blood matching, but I dont know how the insurance would handle testing for that.

Beyond that, 1 unit of cord blood is generally only enough to transplant a small child.  One birth, one unit.  If he is an adult sized person, he would need 2 donors for this to work.  Now that is possible, thats actually how I did mine.  I had no matching relatives or anyone in the adult registry, so we went to cord blood.  Both of my units were 10/10 matches to each other, but only a 6/10 match to me.  This is still in trials, in fact my transplant was a trial at Duke in NC.  He could use your baby's unit, and then one from the public bank.

But, cord blood is also more dangerous than actual marrow or pbsc.  It can take longer to engraft, by a few days.  When someone has no immune system, the longer they have with literally 0 immune system, each hour that goes by leaves them more vulnerable to infections, which would be fatal at that point. What a healthy person wouldnt even notice, would kill the patient waiting on transplant to engraft.

Answer 2

Umbilical cord blood is supposed to be compatible with all blood types so yes it should work.  You need to talk with his brothers oncologist and your obgyn.  The problem with this is that not all hospitals have the ability to collect the umbilical blood and maintain it like it needs to be before being donated.  Check around but that is  a great idea.

Answer 3

it would depend on if both people have the same blood type and the hospital you go to. usually you can only use bone marrow from another person from the spinal cord they have to be of the same blood type your boyfriend should see if he is the same type cause they cannot take it from the baby

Answer 4

I just was reading about this!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...

God bless you .....