New cord bank gets cautious response

Medical experts say benefits of expensive service hazy at best

A new cord bank has launched in New Zealand offering parents the hope of safeguarding their child against nearly 100 diseases including cancer, cerebral palsy and diabetes.

But it comes at a cost and medical experts say the evidence of cord banking’s benefits is hazy at best.

Cell Care, a privately-owned international company, started in New Zealand three weeks ago. Parents can use the service to store their newborn’s umbilical cord blood and tissue stem cells which they can collect if their child becomes sick.

Parents pay $250 for the collection and then an annual fee of $370 for 20 years of storage. Alternatively, they can pay the upfront payment and then 20 years’ worth for $5765.

Cord banking has been available since 2002, but only for blood which is a rich source of stem cells and claims to help treat disorders including leukaemia, lymphoma and anaemia.

Now, parents are being offered storage not only for their child’s cord blood but also their tissue, through Cell Care. The tissue contains other cells which the blood does not, and which have anti-inflammatory properties used in antibiotics.

More than 150,000 sets of parents have used the service. So far, 80 have called on it to try to combat childhood illnesses such as cancer and brain injuries.

Kellie Rogers, Cell Care’s New Zealand manager who is also a midwife, said the clinical trials being conducted in Australia were ground-breaking and the science spoke for itself.

One claimed success story is Ruben Proctor, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at a young age, leaving him with limited movement and a short life expectancy.

His parents took cord blood from his brother Harlo. Within a month of the transfusion, Cell Care says Ruben was able to conquer simple tasks such as kicking a ball and walking up and down the stairs.

Transfusion medicine specialist Dr Richard Charlewood said there was no question cord bloods could help treat conditions in children.

. . . as children get older, the cord blood is less useful . . . Dr Richard Charlewood

“The one difficulty with cord blood collections is that the volume is quite small and, although the concentration of stem cells is high, the small volume by high concentration still gives you a total number of cells that is limited.

“This means that as children get older, the cord blood is less useful, and by adulthood, not really useful at all.”

As for cord tissue, he said the evidence was still under question.

The New Zealand College of Midwives (NZCOM) also recommends caution.

In a report published by NZCOM last year, it said the evidence of probability of any benefit for routine private cord blood collection needed to be explained to parents in an unbiased manner.

It outlined a number of issues parents should be aware of including:

● Only a few diseases can be treated with stem cells and there are limitations.

● If a baby is born with a genetic disease the stem cells from that baby cannot be used because they will have the same genes that caused the disorder.

● Parents need to be aware the child’s own stem cells being used for the treatment of cancer is rare. This uptake is estimated at about 1 in

30,000.

● Parents also need to be aware the use of their child’s own cells to treat existing conditions such as diabetes and cerebral palsy is as yet unproven.

The college says parents need to consider what will happen to the cord blood if the private bank goes out of business and the ongoing cost.

Charlewood said the concern about private cord banks was around the likelihood of the child or their sibling actually needing the cord blood or tissue. “The annual incidence of childhood leukaemia is around 50 per million (according to the World Health Organisation). That means that the parents are paying for something that is really unlikely to be needed.”

The Ministry of Health said it had no current plans to publicly fund these services.