Bigger is better: maternal and neonatal predictors of hematopoietic potential of umbilical cord blood units

Abstract

Summary:Umbilical cord blood (CB) is a useful stem cell source for patients without matched family donors. CB banking is expensive, however, because only a small percentage of the cord units stored are used for transplantation. In this study, we determined whether maternal factors, such as race, age, and smoking status have an effect on laboratory parameters of hematopoietic potential, such as viability, cell counts, CD34+ cell counts, and CFU-GM. We studied the effect of neonatal characteristics such as birth order, birth weight, gestational age, and sex of the baby on the same laboratory parameters. Race and maternal age had no effect on these laboratory parameters. In multivariate analysis, babies of longer gestational age had higher cell counts, but lower CD34 + cell counts and CFU-GM. Bigger babies had higher cell counts, more CD34 + cells, and more CFU-GM. Women with fewer previous live births also produced cord units with higher cell counts, CFU-GM, and CD34 + cell counts. Specifically, each 500 g increase in birth weight contributed to a 28% increase in CD34 + cell counts, each week of gestation contributed to a 9% decrease in CD34 + cell counts, and each previous birth contributed to a 17% decrease in CD34+ cell counts (all P Ͻ 0.05). These data may be used to select the optimal cord blood donors and allow CB banks efficient resource allocation. Bone Marrow Transplantation (2001) 27, 7-14.

Correlation of umbilical cord blood haematopoietic stem and progenitor cell levels with birth weight: implications for a prenatal influence on cancer risk

“…This association is strongest with CD34 þ CD38 À cells, a relatively primitive haematopoietic stem cell population. These data are in line with previous studies, which showed a positive relationship between cord blood CD34 þ or CFU-GM levels and birth weight (Shlebak et al, 1998;Ballen et al, 2001;Aroviita et al, 2004). However, in our study, newborns in the lowest birth weight category (o3000 g) can have higher levels of stem/progenitor cell measurements than those with 3000 -3499 g birth weight resulting in a J-or U-shaped relation between stem cell levels and birth weight.…”

Maternal and Neonatal Factors Associated with the High Yield of Mononuclear Low-Density/CD34+ Cells from Placental/Umbilical Cord Blood

“…Interestingly, we demonstrate that the total LD cells of 1-gravidae aged 25 are significantly higher than 1-gravidae aged 24 (Table 5). This result may be able to explain the previous report that there is no loss of hematopoietic potential in babies delivered to women between the ages of 35 and 40 (Ballen et al 2001).…”

“…In addition, the univariate analyses also show the significantly positive correlations between neonatal birth weight, placental weight, net weight of CB, and gestational age (Fig. 1A-C), implying that bigger is better (Ballen et al 2001). This confirmation consequently allows both LD cells and CD34 + cells to be the variables influenced by the maternal and neonatal factors without any problems caused by different cell-separation/processing procedures.…”

“…Some previous studies described the context of CB banking regarding the cost of CB cell processing and freezing in storage (Sirchia et al 1998(Sirchia et al , 1999Ballen et al 2001;Nakagawa et al 2004). Other previous studies also demonstrated the correlations between the number of nucleated/CD34 + cells and maternal/neonatal factors (Donaldson et al 1999;Yamada et al 2000;Li et al 2001;Askari et al 2005;George et al 2006;Mancinelli et al 2006).…”

“…In this process of separations, the red blood cells and granulocytes are fully removed during the treatment of Ficoll-Paque centrifugation and the purification of CD34 + cells. According to other previous reports (Ballen et al 2001;Mohyeddin Bonab et al 2004;Nakagawa et al 2004), hydroxyethyl starch is used for the separation of nucleated cells and the contents of CD34 + cells are analyzed by flow cytometry. Therefore it could be difficult to compare the absolute numbers of cells in our results with others because the total nucleated cells in other previous reports seem to contain more granulocytes.…”