Umbilical Cord Transplants Viable Option for Adults with Leukemia: Research

http://healthcare.tmcnet.com/topics/healthcare/articles/90204-umbilical-cord-transplants-viable-option-adults-with-leukemia.htm

According to recent research, adult leukemia patients do comparably well when they receive cord blood bank stem cell transplants the way they fare when they receive the stem cells from a well-matched adult donor.

The researchers told Reuters that transplants from the umbilical cord are an option which is quite viable for adult leukemia patients who need a transplant for bone marrow quite urgently. These patients have an urgent need for the transplant in order to make a replacement for cells which radiation and chemotherapy have damaged, for which they fail to find a matching donor.

The Medical College of Wisconsin’s Dr. Mary Eapen has said that what they have found is that when an observation has been made regarding the result of surviving leukemia-free, it is the same whether you are using a cord blood unit, an adult donor or whether you are doing the transplant using an adult graft. Surviving leukemia means that a patient gets to live without the disease.

This study now appears in the Lancet Oncology Journal. Eapen adds in a telephone interview that the cord blood was successful even if the match was not that great. Also, Eapen stated that only approximately half of adult white patients are able to find a donor which is suitable and there is a lower possibility if the patients are Asian or African American.

“Generally,” she says, “if you do not have an acceptable tissue donor match, you will have greater chances of complications which can result in death.”

There are less chances with stem cells from the blood of umbilical cords. This is because the body tolerates placenta blood much more, even if it is not really a match.

Data from 216 transplant centers worldwide have been analyzed by Eapen and her colleagues. The results of one hundred sixty five patients with acute leukemia aged sixteen or older who had received umbilical cord blood were compared to eight hundred eighty eight patient s who were administered with stem cell transplants which were unrelated and four hundred seventy two patients who were given unrelated donor bone marrow. I

n two years, all the patients of all the groups were found equally likely to be a leukemia-free survivor no matter of what the graft source was.

June 28, 2010 (TMCnet)