United States: Today, patients with blood cancer of any race who undergo cord blood transplants are now living longer.
The discovery resulting from an investigation led by oncologist and principal author Dr. Karen Ballen of UVA Health is that while disparities in survivability of transplant patients have been identified before, current disparities no longer exist, as reported by HealthDay.
“Outcomes for cord blood transplants are improving for patients of all racial and ethnic backgrounds,” Ballen said in a UVA news release.
Study Details and Findings
The new study include more than 2,600 patients affected by blood cancer and who underwent umbilical cord blood transplants between 2007 and 2017.
Thus, black, Asian, Hispanic and white receivers ‘survival were similar as depicted by the following:
Nevertheless, there was a higher incidence of ‘graft-versus host’ disease, which is associated with organ toxicity and vulnerability to infections in children of cord blood transplantation, and these were all black children.
Advantages of Cord Blood Transplants
Cord blood cells replace the patient’s bone marrow and help the patient produce blood cells after therapies like high-dose chemotherapy used in cancer procedures.
Even as the number of such transplants has decreased in recent years in the United States, researchers said cord blood continues to offer hope for survival for lots of patients. It is particularly beneficial for persons of color since it does not necessarily have to be perfectly matched to the recipient, as opposed to other cases where a fully matched unrelated donor is almost always difficult to obtain.
Key Insights and Recommendations
Surprisingly, the authors were also able to determine that ethnic similarity was not significantly more preferable than a total nucleated cord blood cell dose, as reported by HealthDay.
More is always welcome they opined.
He and his co-authors mentioned some of the reasons attributed to better survival outcomes, which are as follows: Such measures were increased identification of suitable patients, other new approaches to patient/donor compatibility, and more and better antibiotics and other care.