January 3, 2005
Other
Question from Greensboro, North Carolina, USA:
Since my husband has type 1 diabetes, I decided to bank our child’s cord blood at birth and was glad I made that decision because my son was diagnosed with type 1 when he was 15 months old. Unfortunately, they did not get a large sample to store and it was contaminated with a bacteria. When I spoke with one of the representatives at the cord blood bank they said that the stem cells could still be used from this sample even though it was contaminated. Do you have any experience with this and do you recommend that we continue to pay a yearly fee to store his blood?
Answer:
I question the representative’s claim that a contaminated specimen could still be used. It would be worth getting another opinion on that, perhaps from someone who actually does the transplants, such as a hematologist (call Duke or the University of North Carolina). This does raise a more generic issue about cord blood banking and quality of a facility. There are several companies who bank cord blood, not all of whom are equal in the service they provide. CBR has a good reputation. If the specimen is unusable, then I would suggest dropping the contract.
OWJ
