Can cord blood storage really leave hope for the child's life?

Due to the popularity of "Young Doctors", many medical issues involved in it have also attracted people's attention. Umbilical cord blood preservation is one of them.

When my two children were born, doctors in the United States never recommended saving umbilical cord blood for their children. Many friends in China will encounter such propaganda during the process of giving birth. Does storing umbilical cord blood really "leave life insurance for the child" as advertised by umbilical cord blood storage organizations?

Stem cell transplantation is an extremely hot topic in modern medicine. For many blood and genetic diseases, stem cell transplants can be lifesaving. The umbilical cord blood that would otherwise be discarded contains a considerable number of hematopoietic stem cells and there is no matching problem, so it is regarded as a precious "by-product" of the baby's birth. (Stem cells from other people carry the risk of “mismatching”: a person has a 25% chance of being a match with a sibling and even less with anyone else.)

"Your own umbilical cord blood will never fail to match, so save your own umbilical cord blood in case of any emergency in the future" has become the "theoretical basis" for preserving umbilical cord blood, and has also become the propaganda appeal of many commercial preservation institutions. Commercial Organizations

The marketing of "umbilical cord blood preservation" mainly exploits the fragile emotions of parents when their children are born to gain their approval, concealing many facts.

The amount of umbilical cord blood is limited, usually only a few dozen milliliters. The number of stem cells contained in these dozens of milliliters of umbilical cord blood is only enough for transplantation in children. This means that this insurance can only be effective when the child is young.

It is not as “safe” as described in commercial propaganda. Although future medical advances may reduce the demand for umbilical cord blood, this is also just a "hope" that is not supported by scientific progress.

Most importantly, there is currently no scientific data to support that using your own umbilical cord blood is definitely effective.

The promotion of commercial organizations only focuses on the point that "there is no risk of matching your own umbilical cord blood", but avoids another problem: if the disease comes from genetic factors - which is very common in blood diseases (such as leukemia) - then your own umbilical cord blood stem cells will also carry the same genes, so it cannot really solve the problem.

Logically speaking, scientists may be able to solve this problem in the future - because we have no way of knowing how advanced medicine will be in the future, and no way of knowing whether and when this possibility will be realized. However, commercial organizations have turned "possibility" into "reality".

In theory, there are some diseases that could be treated with one's own stored cord blood. However, different institutions have made different estimates of how likely this is, ranging from one in a few thousand to one in two hundred thousand. More importantly, your own umbilical cord blood is not the only effective option, and may not even be the best option. Based on the current status of biomedical development, the World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the European Union do not encourage ordinary people to preserve umbilical cord blood as "life insurance."

There are many reports of successful cord blood stem cell transplantation treatments in the world now, but these stem cells rarely come from one's own cord blood, but rather from public cord blood banks. The significance of a public cord blood bank is to allow most of the cord blood in society to enter the public "cord blood bank". Although the probability of successful matching between unrelated people is very low, there is still a great chance of successful matching as long as the sample size available is large. This is a very simple arithmetic problem: even if the probability of successful allogeneic matching is as low as one in ten thousand, as long as there are 100,000 selectable samples, the chance of successful matching is still considerable.

Unfortunately, when donating umbilical cord blood has become mainstream abroad, we are still stuck in the false propaganda of "leaving hope for ourselves".

Of course, whether to store umbilical cord blood for your child should be a completely personal choice. No one knows how likely it is that "maybe it can be used", and no one should comment on the price others are willing to pay for this "just in case". However, this choice is based on the fact that parents fully understand the true background of umbilical cord blood preservation. No person or organization should use false information to influence people's choices - whether the choice is for personal gain, for "scientific rationality", or for "social love."