Cerebral palsy and cord blood

I am a graduate student researching cerebral palsy and am writing in response to the article by Erin Cline Davis [“Cord Blood: A Weapon Against Cerebral Palsy?,” April 7].

Though the improvements reported in your article are inspiring and reflect an area of research that deserves more attention, they must also be tempered by caution.

Of importance here is that Dallas Hextell was diagnosed with cerebral palsy by the time he was 8 months old. At the young age of 8 months, it is possible to suspect cerebral palsy, but it is also hard to nail down a diagnosis.

Observation by a team of physicians over time is necessary to rule out a number of conditions that masquerade as cerebral palsy but actually improve over time.

The difficulty of accurate diagnosis is exactly why a study of cord blood treatment should compare cerebral palsy patients who received cord blood against similar cerebral palsy patients who did not receive cord blood.

While the study underway now is an important first step, a treatment-nontreatment study must be performed before any conclusions can be made about the efficacy of cord blood for treating cerebral palsy.

Although the story of Dallas is inspirational, without controlled research, the answer to the title of the article must be an emphatic “We cannot say.”

Pete Haak

Lansing, Mich.