Use of Cord Blood Cells for Banking and Transplant.

Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation has been used to treat thousands of patients, both adults and children, who have life-threatening hematological diseases. The principal limitations of allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) are, for the majority of patients, the lack of suitable HLA-matched donors and the complications of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) associated with HLA mismatches. The lack of an HLA-identical sibling donor in 70% of the cases has been overcome through the establishment of registries of potential marrow donors. These registries, however, often are restricted in terms of HLA polymorphism and ethnic diversity. Despite a bone marrow donor registry which contains >3.7 million donors worldwide, some patients cannot be transplanted because of the lack of a suitable HLA-identical donor. New approaches have been investigated, including the use of HLA partially mismatched, T cell-depleted, mobilized peripheral blood HSC or umbilical cord HSC.

Effect of ascorbic acid on plasma cholesterol in humans in a long-term experiment.

During the period of a low vitamin C intake (approximately equal to 20 mg per day) ascorbic acid in a dose of 2 x 500 mg per day was administered to 82 men and women aged 50-75 years. A correlation of plasma cholesterol levels determined before and after a three months' administration of ascorbic acid showed the effect of vitamin C to be dependent on the starting concentration of plasma cholesterol: the higher the initial cholesterolemia, the greater the hypocholesterolemic effect of ascorbic acid. On restricting the experimental group to subjects with an initial cholesterolemia above 230 mg%, the effect of the same dose of ascorbic acid on cholesterolemia was followed in three-month periods for a further 9 months. In all these time intervals, ascorbic acid was found significantly to depress cholesterolemia and its effects persisted 6 weeks after termination of the experiment. The administration of 2 x 500 mg ascorbic acid daily during one year resulted in an abrupt increase of ascorbemia and a marked accumulation of ascorbic acid in the leucocytes. Six weeks following interruption of ascorbic acid intake, vitamin C concentration in the leucocytes significantly declined but still continued to be twice higher than in the control receiving no ascorbic acid supplement.