The world’s second successful umbilical cord blood transplantation for treatment of aplastic anemia was recently performed at Tehran’s Ali Asghar Children’s Hospital, said Dr Gholamreza Bahoush, hematologist and oncology specialist. “When we failed to find a matching sample of bone marrow for a baby named ‘Karen’, we used the sample of her umbilical cord blood which was stored at Royan Institute’s blood bank to treat her disease,” IRNA quoted him as saying. Although the success rate of the method is low, “our experts succeeded in treating the baby.” Aplastic anemia is a condition that occurs when the body stops producing enough new blood cells.
