A University of Minnesota doctor calls it a "major breakthrough" in finding donors to treat childhood Leukemia.
That?s Dr. John Wagner?s reaction to the results of a study published in this week?s edition of "The Lancet."
Wagner says bone marrow transplants have been the traditional gold standard for treatment. But because that treatment requires finding a compatible donor, nearly two-thirds of patients can?t find the best donor possible.
However the new study points to umbilical cord blood as a viable option.
Dr. Wagner, who had the idea to do the study comparing bone marrow and cord blood, has been doing cord blood transplants for 15 years.
He says researchers found that cord blood ? even when there?s not an exact match between donor and patient ? has a similar success rate to the best bone marrow match.
Dr. Wagner says that means far more patients can get help.
"So we estimate today that there are thousands of patients that could potentially benefit from transplant medicine and yet can't go on because they can't find a matched marrow donor. This is a whole strategy, what we hoped for was that we could come up with an alternative donor, and cord blood appears to not only be a good alternative, it seems to be as good as the gold standard," said Wagner.
The first study focused on children. Wagner?s next study will look at adult patients with leukemia.
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