Footballers using babies as 'repair kits'

Premiership footballers are storing stem cells from their newborn babies to use in case of their own career-threatening sports injuries.

They are freezing cells taken from the umbilical cord blood of their babies as a possible future cure for cartilage and ligament problems, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.

Five professional footballers have frozen their children's stem cells with Liverpool-based CryoGenesis International (CGI), and London-based Smart Cells, has done the same for three Premiership players in the past year.

One Premier League footballer, playing in the northwest of England, explained: "We decided to store our new baby's stem cells for possible future therapeutic reasons, both for our children and possibly for myself.

"As a footballer, if you're prone to injury it can mean the end of your career, so having your stem cells - a repair kit if you like - on hand makes sense," added the player, who declined to be named.

Paul Griffiths, managing director of CGI, said: "This has been carried out experimentally. The stem cells are injected directly into the knee and because they have the same genetic code they start rebuilding."

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