Should we bank our baby's cord blood / cord tissue?
May 8, 2018 12:56 PM Subscribe
We are a very racially-mixed couple expecting our first child next week. Should we bank the baby's cord blood and/or cord tissue?
When I say we're mixed, I mean we really are: our baby will be a roughly even split of 6 different races, including ancestry in some smallish ethnic populations that do have certain known genetic concerns.
It is vanishingly unlikely we'd ever find another family with the same racial mix as ours. We hope to have one more child, although of course this isn't guaranteed. We're concerned that finding a donor match would be difficult if ever needed.
We're in Toronto, Canada. The service that we'd have the easiest access to is probably this one as I believe they have a branch in our hospital. It's pricey and we'd feel the cash pinch a little, but ultimately we can afford it, and this isn't a decision I think we should make based on finances.
The baby's mother is chronically anemic (while pregnant, her Hemoglobin is ~110, and Ferritin less than 10). Allowing cord blood to pulse out into the baby is good for neonatal iron levels. I think I read somewhere that when collecting cord blood to store, you can slightly delay cord clamping, and allow the baby to get about 45 seconds of extra blood, rather than letting the cord "pulse out" into the baby for a full 3 minutes. This allows you to basically get the best of both worlds- get some cord blood into baby, and save some, too. But I can no longer find the source where I read that, so it may not be accurate.
We've read these previous AskMe questions about cord blood, but since a few years have passed, it seemed worthwhile to ask again, given possible medical technology advances.
So-
1. Is it worth it to bank the cord blood?
2. Is it worth it to bank the cord tissue?
3. Any Canadians able to share past experiences with that specific company, or others we could access?
4. Is there anything else we should consider?
Thank you!
When I say we're mixed, I mean we really are: our baby will be a roughly even split of 6 different races, including ancestry in some smallish ethnic populations that do have certain known genetic concerns.
It is vanishingly unlikely we'd ever find another family with the same racial mix as ours. We hope to have one more child, although of course this isn't guaranteed. We're concerned that finding a donor match would be difficult if ever needed.
We're in Toronto, Canada. The service that we'd have the easiest access to is probably this one as I believe they have a branch in our hospital. It's pricey and we'd feel the cash pinch a little, but ultimately we can afford it, and this isn't a decision I think we should make based on finances.
The baby's mother is chronically anemic (while pregnant, her Hemoglobin is ~110, and Ferritin less than 10). Allowing cord blood to pulse out into the baby is good for neonatal iron levels. I think I read somewhere that when collecting cord blood to store, you can slightly delay cord clamping, and allow the baby to get about 45 seconds of extra blood, rather than letting the cord "pulse out" into the baby for a full 3 minutes. This allows you to basically get the best of both worlds- get some cord blood into baby, and save some, too. But I can no longer find the source where I read that, so it may not be accurate.
We've read these previous AskMe questions about cord blood, but since a few years have passed, it seemed worthwhile to ask again, given possible medical technology advances.
So-
1. Is it worth it to bank the cord blood?
2. Is it worth it to bank the cord tissue?
3. Any Canadians able to share past experiences with that specific company, or others we could access?
4. Is there anything else we should consider?
Thank you!
I actually wrote a scientific paper touching on this recently. There is a lot of sketchy information out there.
Consider donating your cord blood to the national public bank (lots of info at blood.ca) rather than banking it - the scientific merit of private banking for your child's future personal use is extremely questionable, despite what the for-profit banks will tell you. Notice how vague all their promises are? There's a reason for that. For any health problem cord blood might help with, your banked sample is very very likely to either have the same genetic problems, or to not have enough volume to help (typically multiple cord blood samples are required for a successful cord blood transplant).
On the other hand, public cord blood banks do have some scientific merit, as a backup plan for people (often mixed-race) who have trouble finding a bone marrow match.
If you aren't able to donate to the public bank, I still would not recommend banking it privately, as there is very little to suggest it would be useful even if your child someday needs a stem cell transplant (already very unlikely) and is not able to find a match in the internationally-linked registries of bone marrow donors OR in a family member OR in the public cord blood bank. The "potential" of private cord blood banking hasn't been getting much closer to reality in the last decade. Compare that potential to the far more concrete potential of investing those thousands of dollars into e.g. an education fund, and think about which option is likely to benefit your child more.
posted by randomnity at 1:40 PM on May 8, 2018 [19 favorites]
Consider donating your cord blood to the national public bank (lots of info at blood.ca) rather than banking it - the scientific merit of private banking for your child's future personal use is extremely questionable, despite what the for-profit banks will tell you. Notice how vague all their promises are? There's a reason for that. For any health problem cord blood might help with, your banked sample is very very likely to either have the same genetic problems, or to not have enough volume to help (typically multiple cord blood samples are required for a successful cord blood transplant).
On the other hand, public cord blood banks do have some scientific merit, as a backup plan for people (often mixed-race) who have trouble finding a bone marrow match.
If you aren't able to donate to the public bank, I still would not recommend banking it privately, as there is very little to suggest it would be useful even if your child someday needs a stem cell transplant (already very unlikely) and is not able to find a match in the internationally-linked registries of bone marrow donors OR in a family member OR in the public cord blood bank. The "potential" of private cord blood banking hasn't been getting much closer to reality in the last decade. Compare that potential to the far more concrete potential of investing those thousands of dollars into e.g. an education fund, and think about which option is likely to benefit your child more.
posted by randomnity at 1:40 PM on May 8, 2018 [19 favorites]
Our child is also mixed race and we did considered banking cord blood. We ultimately decided against because of the reasons randomnity mentions and also because it seemed to be a choice between that and delayed cord clamping and the benefits of delayed cord clamping are well-established.
posted by peacheater at 4:24 PM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by peacheater at 4:24 PM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
If you want advice of a stranger: my advice is no. Life has dangers, your child has a small chance of coming to harm from an infinite array of unforeseeable dangers. I don't think it's worth trying to mitigate this one. That's my personal two cents based on my personal biases.
Signed (for the sake of you evaluating my answer), a nurse and parent who is white.
posted by latkes at 5:18 PM on May 8, 2018
Signed (for the sake of you evaluating my answer), a nurse and parent who is white.
posted by latkes at 5:18 PM on May 8, 2018
Another interracial couple with a mixed kid here. We also decided against banking anything because there was precious little evidence to suggest it would be of use to us, and we felt that money would be better spent in other ways to concretely benefit our kid instead of merely safeguarding against a nebulous potential threat. Granted, we ended up buying an unnecessarily fancy carseat, so possibly we're just giant hypocrites, but all of my research also indicated that delayed cord clamping effectively eliminates any chance of cord blood banking, and that was something we definitely wanted. That said, I should probably confess that even though delayed cord clamping was the standard at the hospital we delivered at, that also didn't end up happening for Reasons, but I take that as clear evidence that you simply cannot plan for all eventualities, so don't make yourself broke and crazy by trying.
posted by Diagonalize at 5:50 PM on May 8, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Diagonalize at 5:50 PM on May 8, 2018 [3 favorites]
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