M.A.Z.E. Cord Blood Laboratories has introduced a quiz where parents can test their knowledge about cord blood banking.  You can take the quiz, get your score and even post your score on your blog or Web page. 

Test your knowledge with the cord blood quiz.

Learn more about cord blood banking.

When parents are considering banking their cord blood, they often ask if there is a charge to retrieve the cord blood.  There should be no cost to retrieve the cord blood.  What a cord blood bank might charge you for is shipping of the sample.  Since the sample needs to be shipped frozen, you will need to rent a portable nitrogen tank to ship the sample.  This money is not for removing the sample from storage, it is a rental fee for the tank.  You should always check with your cord blood bank to make sure they will not charge you a handling fee for removing the cord blood from storage.

Umbilical cord blood stem cells may one day be used to build heart valves for children born with heart defects.  Ralf Sodian of University Hospital Munich, who led the study, presented at the American Heart Association annual meeting, that these valves would grow with the child, eliminating the need for ongoing surgical intervention to replace outgrown heart valves.

This was a very preliminary study, called a concept study.  Through the study, researchers demonstrated that it was possible to collect blood from the umbilical cord at birth, harvest the stem cells and create a heart valve that will be available when the baby needs it.  Currently, heart valves are replaced using animal valves, donated human valves or artificial valves.

Researchers extracted and froze the stem cells from the cord blood.  They later seeded the cells into biodegradable heart valve scaffolds.  The cells grew into a tissue layer that was determined to be heart tissue.

While this study shows promise, there is a long way to go before the technique can be tried on patients.  Meanwhile, it is exciting to know that this is another potential use for stored cord blood.

Many parents who are considering banking their infant’s cord blood, often wonder how long the cord blood can be saved before it starts to deteriorate.  Banking cord blood is a new enough procedure that scientists don’t have an answer to that question yet.

The data for cord blood involves specimens that have been frozen for 10-12 years.  In those specimens, there seems to be no deterioration.  This doesn’t say that cord blood will not last longer, it just says that there has never been any research conducted on specimens that have been stored longer.

The closest analogy is frozen sperm, and there is a great deal of data using sperm.  Researchers have found that with sperm, there is no deterioration after 25-30 years and no expected deterioration after that.

While there is no research with extremely long-term storage with cord blood, there is no reason to believe that it can not be stored indefinitely.