If I banked cord blood from one child, should I bank the next?

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YES! Unless your family has special medical issues, most parents don’t know which of their children have matching HLA tissue types. Your child’s HLA types come in pairs; in each pair, one is from the mother and one is from the father. The odds of siblings being a perfect match are 1 in 4. A Cord Blood transplant with a 5/6 or 4/6 mis-match of key HLA types carries less graft-vs-host disease than a perfect 6/6 bone marrow transplant. (Reference: V Rocha, et al, 2000; NEJM 342:1846) If you did not bank for previous children, you should still consider banking for the next child. Please check the growing list of birthing hospitals which accept donations to public banks; perhaps you can donate the Cord Blood from your next child and save a stranger’s life. If no donation center is available to you or your family has special concerns, you should consider family banking for your next child.