Infrastructure

The infrastructure available to the Graduate Program in Child and Adolescent Health at FMRP-USP for research and production of knowledge includes a large hospital complex and health and emergency care units, which constitute a field of teaching and research. The Program also relies on several laboratories and two research centers.

The General Hospital, Ribeirão Preto Medical School, University of São Paulo (HCFMRP-USP), is characterized as a tertiary health care service. The Hospital provides highly complex health care and has highly specialized professionals. It has 915 beds, including 169 beds in the Emergency Unit and 175 beds in the Child Hospital. The Emergency Unit of HCFMRP-USP is a tertiary-level emergency room and 44 beds for hospitalization of pediatric patients, distributed as follows: 16 beds in the Pediatric Ward, three in the Semi-Intensive Care Unit, eight in the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Ward, eight in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, and nine in the Pediatric Emergency Room. The Child Hospital provides comprehensive, highly complex care to children and adolescents in the various pediatric subspecialties. It has 175 beds: 56 in the ward, 16 in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (ICU), 20 in the Neonatal ICU, 23 in the Intermediate Neonatal Care Unit, and 30 for the mother-child binomial. In addition to providing tertiary level health care at the HCFMRP-USP hospital complex, professionals linked to the Department of Childcare and Pediatrics at FMRP-USP provide primary and secondary care in health units, such as the Vila Lobato Community Social Medical Center and emergency care units, such as UPA Oeste. All these services have the essential infrastructure to offer excellent health care to the pediatric population, which is reflected in an opportunity for quality research in child and adolescent health in different contexts, covering all pediatric subspecialties.

The Pediatrics Laboratory at the HCFMRP-USP supports research projects for the Child and Adolescent Health Program and other FMRP-USP programs. With an area of 474 m2, the Lab includes the sectors of Biochemistry, Cardiology, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Hematology, Immunology, Infectology, Nephrology, Oncology (Cytogenetics), and Rheumatology. The equipment park includes:

  • Millipore Water Purification Systems (Milli-Q and Elix10)
  • Liquid Nitrogen Containers
  • -80 °C FreezersoC 
  • ELISA Readers
  • Western blot system
  • Electrophoresis Systems
  • Chemiluminescence Detection Imaging System – Chemidoc
  • Conventional thermal cyclers
  • Real-time Thermal Cyclers – Quant Studio 12K Flex, ABI 7500 and ABI StepOne
  • Optical microscopes
  • Nikon Eclipse TS2 Fluorescence Microscope
  • Refrigerated centrifuges
  • Laminar flow  
  • CO2 incubators.

In 2018, the Sector of Metals and Rare Diseases of the Pediatrics Laboratory was inaugurated, with new equipment, including:

  • EAA 55B Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer
  • FG640Z EAA Graphite Furnace Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer
    • Both are used in the quantification of metals, minerals, and micronutrients in various fluids and organic tissues, including sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, copper, zinc, selenium, and lead, among others.
  • Gas chromatograph with an AGILENT mass spectrometry detection system, with an internal library for more than 250,000 compounds that can be volatilized, currently set up for organic acids, but it can also detect amino acids, fatty acids, illicit drug metabolites such as cocaine and marijuana, among others.
  • WATERS XEVO TQD tandem mass spectrometer, which comprises a liquid ultra-performance chromatography (UPLC) column, coupled with a dual-mass spectrometry detection system, currently set up for amino acids and acylcarnitines for expanded neonatal screening, but which can search for numerous elements or nutrients, including with the purpose of discovery science.

 

In addition to the infrastructure of the health care units, the Pediatrics Laboratory and the various laboratories of the HCFMRP-USP Complex, two research centers linked to the Department of Child Care and Pediatrics at FMRP-USP support the program: Center for Studies on Maternal, Neonatal, and Child Infection at HCFMRP-USP (NEIMPI) and the Center for the Study of Child and Adolescent Health (NESCA). NEIMPI, coordinated by Prof. Dr. Marisa Márcia Mussi, supports international multicenter clinical trials in ​​maternal and child health. NESCA, coordinated by Profs. Drs. Marco Antonio Barbieri, Heloisa Bettiol, and Viviane Cunha Cardoso relies on the essential infrastructure and resources to organize and coordinate research projects related to the birth cohorts of Ribeirão Preto in 1978/79, 1994, and 2010 in partnership with the Federal University of Maranhão and the Federal University of Pelotas, and conduct research projects in epidemiology in child and adolescent health.