Does your baby’s umbilical cord hold a miracle?

A four year old boy will become the recipient of stem cells extracted from the umbilical cord of his baby sister who was just born last week in Athens. The boy is afflicted with chronic granulomatous disease, a congenital heterogeneous immunodeficiency disorder resulting from the failure of phagocytes to kill ingested microbes, resulting in increased susceptibility to severe infections that eventually leads to untimely death.

Being administered by geneticist Costas Pangalos and gynecologist Costas Pantos, the procedure will be the world’s first for this particular disease.

Dr. Pantos told ANA-MPA that the parents of the sick toddler’s parents also have a healthy older child. In the procedure, the mother’s ova (eggs) are fertilized in vitro. The fertilized ovaries then undergo a PGD (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis) to determine which fertilized ova are free of this particular hereditary disease, as well as a histocompatibility test for compatibility with the ailing child. The disease-free, compatible ovum is than implanted into the woman’s uterus.

The procedure was innovative given that no tissue or blood was taken from the infant itself, Pantos explained. Instead the treatment was of the kind where stem cells from the blood contained in either the umbilical cord or the placenta — both of which are discarded after the birth takes place — are used to save lives.

Given traditional treatment, the 4-year-old boy