In a world-first, a baby in China has received a treatment using cord blood stem cells to combat a rare genetic defect. The 10-month old baby, named Zhao Jiaxin, has just been released from hospital after successfully being treated for an inflammatory bowel condition, caused by the IL-10 RA gene defect.
She received the treatment using cord blood stem cells on July 31 at the Children’s Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai. She was only 6-months old when she received the treatment.
Director of the hospital’s haematology department, Dr Zhai Xiaowen describes the case: “There’s no report of umbilical cord blood being used for patients with inflammatory bowel disease with IL-10 RA defect, which the girl was diagnosed with, across the world so far. Most reports about the treatment of the disease have been through bone marrow transplantation.”
The procedure used stem cells from umbilical cord blood. Unlike bone marrow stem cells, there is no painful procedure required to gather stem cells from umbilical cord — they are simply drained from the detached umbilical cord.
There are many hematopoietic stem cells from umbilical cord blood, a type of stem cell that can generate blood cells. HSCs are used to treat nearly 80 diseases including many forms of cancer, immune system disorders, metabolic disorders and blood disorders.
At this stage baby Zhao Jiaxin needs to be fed very frequently to ensure she keeps gaining weight and goes to the toilet properly. The baby was born in rural Zhoukou, Henan province earlier this year, and then fell ill when she was just one week old. After presenting with severe diarrhoea, fever, vomiting and inflammation, doctors eventually diagnosed her with the disorder — a process that took months and visits to many hospitals.
The stem cell transplant caused the defective genes to alter their behaviour and function correctly. The success rate of the transplant was particularly high with 98.6% of the stem cells transfusing successfully.
Source: ‘Miracle of life’: Baby recovers after receiving umbilical blood