Umbilical Cord Blood Transplants Help Young Leukemia Victims

Transplants of umbilical cord blood are as effective as bone marrow transplants in saving the lives of childhood leukemia victims and others whose ravaged immune systems must be restored, an international team of researchers reports in today’s New England Journal of Medicine.

Umbilical cord blood appears more likely than marrow to work when the donor and the recipient are unrelated, according to the team from the University of Wisconsin and the Paris-based Eurocord-Cord Blood Transplant Group. In the study, recipients of cord blood and marrow had about the same five-year survival rate: 50% for those with malignant diseases and 85% for those with nonmalignant diseases.

Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II