At a time when many expectant mothers were still struggling with whether to save umbilical cord blood for their children, Xixi (pseudonym), an 8-year-old boy in Chengdu, finally waited for this "life-saving blood".
At 9:30 a.m. on February 18, in the laminar flow ward on the 9th floor of Building 6, Children's Hospital Affiliated to Chongqing Medical University, Xixi lay on the bed, quietly waiting, and the doctor took the recovered cord blood from the hands of the cord blood bank staff, carefully checked it, and then infused it into Xixi's body without stopping to complete the transplant for him.
01
【Misfortune strikes, 5-year-old boy suddenly suffers from rare diseases】
Sisi was diagnosed with Fanconi anemia at the age of 5, a congenital hematologic disease that was included in the First Rare Diseases Catalogue, and patients usually develop the disease at the age of 4-10, in addition to anemia, bleeding and infection, accompanied by multiple congenital malformations and developmental delays.
It is understood that this rare disease usually uses hormone therapy, patients with serious diseases need blood transfusions, and can maintain the condition through drug treatment, and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is currently the only means of radical treatment. Therefore, a "suitable" hematopoietic stem cell is especially important for children like Sissi.
The most difficult hematopoietic stem cell transplant is HLA (human white blood cell antigen) matching, the probability of successful matching without blood relations is very low, and the umbilical cord blood of siblings has a 25% probability of full coincidence, which is the highest probability of full matching among all hematopoietic stem cell sources.
Cord blood is blood that remains in the placenta and umbilical cord after fetal delivery, cord ligation and detachment, which contains hematopoietic stem cells that can rebuild the human hematopoietic and immune systems, and is one of the three major sources of hematopoietic stem cells.
02
【25% little lucky sister cord blood matching success】
In order to save Sissi, the parents decided to have another child, hoping to save the "right" cord blood for their son. With the mission of saving her brother, in 2020, Chengdu Women and Children's Central Hospital, Xixi's sister was born. Nurse Liu Mengying collected the cord blood and sent it to the cord blood bank for freezing.
Fortunately, after testing, the sister's cord blood and the ten loci of the Sissi HLA matching were all in harmony. When Sissi's parents heard the news, they were so excited that they shed tears, thanking God for sending them this rare luck.
Now Sissi has completed the transplantation of cord blood hematopoietic stem cells and is in good condition. We sincerely hope that health can always accompany his growth.
With the expansion of the scope of clinical application, cord blood can not only protect the health of the self-survivors themselves, but also escort the health of their families.
A cord blood match is 100% and a half matching chance with a parent; a matching rate of 25% to 50% between non-twin siblings; and a higher matching chance among other relatives. Therefore, if economic conditions permit, storing cord blood for children is a very important investment in family health.
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