By Jessica LaDow
Joshua Marshall was born on June 30, 2001, a healthy baby boy as far his parents and doctors knew. But when Joshua was just five months old, he developed a rare form of pneumonia, and his parents were faced with tragic news.
Joshua suffered from a rare disorder; he was born without an immune system, a condition known as Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disease.
“He was turning blue and greying out. We thought it was a reaction to one of his shots, but it was worse,” his mother, Deborah, said. “It was terrifying.”
Deborah and her husband Mark were given one solution: he needed a stem cell transplant.
Stem cells have traditionally been transplanted via bone marrow transplants, but finding a match can be timely, and the procedure is invasive and painful. His family would have to relocate from their home in Portersville in Butler County to North Carolina for at least six months to complete the procedure. There was, however, another option: a cord blood transplant.
Cord blood is the blood leftover in the umbilical cord after the birth of a child. The blood is rich in stem cells, but is usually disposed of shortly after birth. Cord blood banks, like the local Dan Berger Cord Blood Program, store cord blood in both private and public banks to provide access to the life-saving cells, said Andrea Romo, spokeswoman for the program.
On New Years Eve, just one month after his diagnosis, Joshua received his transplant.
“It wasn’t surgery or anything invasive at all,” Deborah said. “It was so easy, it was over in 10 minutes.”
The donor cord blood, which the Marshall’s only know came from the birth of a female baby, was injected into Joshua’s body. The procedure, Deborah said, was relatively painless.
Doctors noticed improvement just two weeks later, she said. His body started producing T cells.
Joshua is now a healthy 7-year-old boy. He runs, jumps and goes to school with his peers without the fear of simple childhood illnesses. The only disruption to his childhood routine is a quick visit to Children’s Hospital every six weeks for antibody treatments.
“I wish mothers knew what one simple ‘yes’ could do for a life,” Deborah said. “It’s no harm to them or their baby, and it could save the life of somebody like my son.”
Don’t let your baby’s cord blood go to waste:
Cord blood is used to save lives. It can be used to help cure 40 different diseases in both children and adults. The Dan Berger Cord Blood Program encourages all expectant mothers to consider either storing cord blood for personal use or donating it, free of charge, for use by those in need.
The donation process is simple and occurs right after birth with no harm to either mother or child. By signing up for the program, mothers are potentially saving lives by simply saving stem-cell rich blood that would normally be discarded as medical waste.
Expectant mothers can either ask their doctors for information or visit www.dangbergercordblood.com. For more information about cord blood donation, expectant mothers may also contact Mary Wiegel at 412-209-7479 or mwiegel@itxm.org.
Cord blood details:
Cord blood can be collected for storage for personal use, storage for public donation or storage for medical research.
Regardless of the reason for collection, expectant mothers must:
- Be at least 18 years old
- Know who the father of the child is
- Not have had any new tattoos or piercing in the last year
- Reveal any recent foreign travel
Collection happens just after birth, Romo said. The same nurses and doctors who assist in delivery remove the blood from the umbilical cord while the mother recovers and meets her newborn. Since the procedure is done after the baby and placenta are delivered, she said, there is no pain or danger to either the mother or the child.
Romo recommends that expectant mothers research the program early in their pregnancy to accommodate testing and paperwork.
- Through the Dan Berger Cord Blood Program, donation to a public bank or medical research is free, but a yearly charge is applied for private storage.
- Cord blood stem cells are NOT the same as embryonic stem cells, which involve the destruction of an embryo. Collection causes no harm to the baby or mother, as it is done after the baby is delivered and the placenta is delivered.
- Donated cord blood does not have to match a recipient’s blood as closely as in bone marrow does, because of their infantile state. This means faster matching, Romo said, and less graph-host infection and rejection.
-The fee for private storage is $100-$150 per year.
-Mothers of multiples (twins, triplets) may not be eligible to donate.
About the Dan Berger Cord Blood Program:
The Dan Berger Cord Blood Program was established in October 2007 in the name of Dan Berger, a Pittsburgh attorney who underwent a stem cell transplant to successfully overcome leukemia and lymphoma. He died in July of 2006 of heart failure. His wife, Carol, approached Magee Women's Foundation with the idea of starting a cord blood bank in Pittsburgh to further the use and research of stem cell transplants.
Hospitals operating in partner with the Dan Berger Cord Blood Program are UPMC hospitals including Magee-Womens ,Horizon - Shenango Valley, Mercy, and Northwest. Other outlying hospitals are working to start their own programs and include St. Vincent Health Center in Erie, St. Clair Hospital and Indiana Regional Medical Center in Indiana, Pa.
- To date, the Dan Berger Cord Blood Program has performed over 1,300 cord blood collections.
- The program is the only in the country to offer three different collection approaches: collection to be stored for private use, collection to be donated to a public bank and collection to be used for medical research.
- Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC leads the nation with a 35 percent public collection-to-storage rate. The national public collection-to-storage rate is between 20 and 25 percent.
To learn more about the Dan Berger Cord Blood Program, contact Andrea Romo, Communications Specialist, Magee-Womens Research Institute & Foundation
412-641-8934 www.mwrif.org
Jessica LaDow is a freelance journalist in the Pittsburgh Region. She can be reached at jmladow@pointpark.edu
Posted
May 01 2009, 12:01 PM
by
Heather