Monday, February 20, 2012

Sickle Cell Disease Cured With Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cells









In today's 6 For Your Health headlines... Sickle cell disease has been particularly devastating to the African American community. Now during Black History Month there are signs of hope that the tide is turning.

A 10-year-old girl has been cured of sickle cell, disease free for 3 years. The key for her was a stem cell transplant made possible from stored umbilical cord blood. Marianne Favro reports.

Just days after Lucky Mulumba gave birth to her first child, she learned her baby, Carol, had sickle cell anemia.

Lucky Mulumba, mother: "They told us that she had the most severe type and she's going to live a hard life. Some physicians predicted she may not live past ten years."

For the next 6 years, Carol struggled with an endless dose of pain.

Carol Mulumba - sickle cell anemia survivor: "The pain in my head was like a punch; in my stomach it was like a kick. My heart felt like a squeeze and my back felt like a scratch."

Pain so severe she couldn't attend school.

Lucky Mulumba: "Carol was battling for her life. She was getting mini strokes, she was on morphine drips, she was sick."

That's when Carol says her younger brother Mark saved her life. He was born just 2 years after Carol and his parents banked his umbilical cord blood.

The cord blood registry collected and stored the stem cells in the blood as part of a free program called newborn possibilities. When Carol turned 7 she received a stem cell transplant using Mark's banked cells.

Dr. Kate Brown, cord blood registry: "Once the stem cells are in the patient's body, they then reproduce the blood and immune system so we're replacing the sickle-celled blood system with the blood system from a healthy donor."

The treatment worked, curing Carol of sickle cell. She's been disease-free for 3 years.

Carol Mulumba: "Now I feel great. And I don't have any pain and I don't have to visit the doctor all the time."

Which is great because now she has time to enjoy school, give her brother extra hugs for helping save her life and meet with President Obama to tell him how cord blood can be so much more than your lifeline in the womb.

Carol is not the only patient benefiting from cord blood. Doctors say these types of stem cells in umbilical cords are used to treat 80 different diseases including some blood cancers, immune disorders and anemias.


With so many new applications coming out using cord blood stem cells, the decision to bank your baby's cord blood is becoming more important than ever...........MrCordBlood

2 comments:

  1. Joseph Davis II, from Tx has been disease free for more than 11 years following his cord blood stem cell transplant. The Secret Is Out, Cord Blood Stem Cells is a book available at Amazon , Barnes and Noble and most major retailers that shares the Davis family's miraculous story of success.

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  2. Carol is lucky to get the sickle cell disease treated. This was the another example of the benefits of the umbilical cord stem cell banking. Umbilical cord blood are the rich source of stem cells, which are used to treat 80 life threatening diseases.

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