Umbilical Cord
Umbilical cord is a pipe like structure which connects baby and mother and helps in the transmission of nutrition to baby during the nine months of gestation period.
Umbilical Cord Blood
The blood which flows inside the umbilical cord is known as the umbilical cord blood and consist of large amount of stems cells which are undifferentiated in nature and are responsible for the development of baby during the gestation period.
Usually this Umbilical cord and the blood are discarded by the doctors at the time of delivery of the baby or else kept by the family members who believe in superstitions and old rituals. But apart from that as this blood which we thought of as waste is a rich source of stem cells and now a days is being preserved and used by many people for the treatment of various kind of life threatening diseases ,cure of which was not possible in the past and there are many more disease on which the research is going on.
Umbilical cord blood is considered equally important as embryonic stem cells and plays very efficient role.Previously cells from the bone marrow were being used for the treatment but nowadays umbilical cord blood stem cells prevails.
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