“I used to work in a theoretical institute, so it was nice to deal with topics that come from practice”

He is a very active supervisor in the Pediatrics Group, and he has published a paper in a top-ranked scientific journal with his Ph.D. student. Their results are essential and can help to improve the care of preterm infants. In March, Ákos Gasparics was named Supervisor of the Month (Year 2/3) at the Centre for Translational Medicine.

Dr. Gasparics is an assistant professor at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Semmelweis University, and he joined CTM as a supervisor three years ago. Currently, he has two Ph.D. students, Dr. Kinga Kovács, a third-year student, and Dr. Gréta Major, a second-year student. „I had already worked in the clinic when Dr. Kovács applied to us as a resident. We started working together, and shortly afterward, she became interested in the CTM Ph.D. program. As I was also attracted to the opportunity, I was happy to become her supervisor.”

Dr. Gasparics and Dr. Kovács had several ideas that they wanted to clarify, and they started working on two of them. One was how the different histopathological conditions of the placenta and umbilical cord affect the outcome of preterm infants. “I liked this research because I used to work in a theoretical institute, so it was really nice to deal with topics that come from practice. After we published our meta-analysis, we started looking retrospectively at our own patient data to see how placental and umbilical cord inflammation predicted complications. A manuscript on this topic is to be published soon.” In their other study, Dr. Gasparics and Dr. Kovács want to determine whether using a single additional loading dose of caffeine citrate one hour before extubation impacts the success rate of extubation. To clarify this, they prepared a study protocol for a multicenter randomized clinical trial, which was recently published. The trial has already started and has all the approvals from the national pharmaceutical authorities and from the European Medicines Agency.

“My other Ph.D. student completed her first project last year. She conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis investigating the outcomes of neonatal resuscitation with and without an intact umbilical cord. Our second study is on the umbilical cord, which has a natural coiling. This means that at a distance of 10 centimeters, the umbilical cord turns three times around itself. There are conditions in which the umbilical cord overcoils or undercoils. Both appear to be abnormal. In a meta-analysis, we want to clarify what these abnormalities mean in practice and what their outcome might be.”

(Szabó Emese)