Can child’s umbilical-cord blood be used to treat his own cerebral palsy?

April 7th, 2008 Posted in Blog

In our previous post, we investigated the clinical trial that Dallas Hextell had undergone, using his own umbilical cord blood to treat his cerebral palsy. Since then, Dallas, who is 2 years old, is walking, clapping, and laughing like any other toddler his age.

In our cord blood precious stem cells exist, which have the ability to incorporate themselves into our organs when injected into our bloodstream. There is hope that these will someday be able to regenerate damaged tissues in certain diseases. Now, parents have increasing interest in saving their newborns’ cord blood in private, for-profit banks, like Dallas’ parents.

The clinical trial is taking place at Duke University, and Dallas is just one of the twelve children who have undergone this procedure thus far. Based on animal studies in which rabbits with cerebral palsy-like symptoms were injected with cord blood, the trial will test approximately 40 children and track each child’s success over two years. The therapy is slightly different from children who have cancers and other genetic conditions; these children are injected with cord blood different from their own, to avoid infusing patients with cells that have the same disease.

Dallas has dramatically improved and highly benefited from this procedure. However, it is impossible to tell at this point just how much progress he and the others will make. In the treatments, only Dallas and one other child have shown such drastic improvements, while the others have more modest results. Progress could also have occurred not just from the treatments, but also from extra attention from the parents and raised expectations or any other methods the parents may have coupled with the infusions.

While it may not result in an exact cure, it is certainly a promising procedure and gives hope for those children and families affected by cerebral palsy.

For the full article, click here.