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Girl's Own Cord Blood Gives Her Parents Hope

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Oct 2, 2008 9:40 am US/Mountain

Girl's Own Cord Blood Gives Her Parents Hope

Reporting
Kathy Walsh
HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. (CBS4) ― A toddler in Highlands Ranch born with Cerebral Palsy has made "remarkable" progress thanks to her own umbilical cord blood. Chloe Levine, 2, is benefitting from a treatment many parents don't know about.

Her parents, Jenny and Ryan, knew something wasn't quite right after Chloe's birth. At 9 months, she couldn't hold a bottle with her right hand because it was always in a tight fist. She also would drag her right leg and scoot along the floor rather than crawl.

"She was fast and she was good at it, but she wouldn't crawl," her parents said.

A few months later, her doctor ran some tests and learned Chloe had a stroke in utero which caused brain tissue to stop developing. The Cerebral Palsy caused paralysis on her right side.

Fortunately, the Levine's had banked Chloe's umbilical cord blood when she was born and stored it with a private company.

Doctors at Duke University were using cord blood, infusing children with Cerebral Palsy with their own stem cells to possibly heal and repair damaged brain tissue.

Chloe had an experimental procedure in late May. Her parents noticed improvement a couple of days later.

"She began saying words we had worked weeks and weeks to try and get her to say, one being her nickname, 'Coco' and that was music to our ears," Jenny Levine said.

The Levine's stored Chloe's cord blood with a company called Cord Blood Registry. It is the world's largest cord blood bank.

The registry said 40 of its clients have been involved in the experimental treatment at Duke University and many of them have shown improvements.

The procedure of cord blood storage is costly: about $2,000 for the collection and $125 a year for storage.

Other parents donate their baby's cord blood to a free public bank for the use of others to treat disease. There is a public bank at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Additional Resources: 

Cord Blood Banking with CBR

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