News

Patient advocates, healthcare providers and researchers help map a future research agenda aimed at reducing maternal mortality and severe morbidity.

Maternal stress during pregnancy may influence fetal brain development in ways that increase the risk of depression by early adolescence, suggests a small study funded by the National Institutes of Health.

In an editorial, Diana W. Bianchi, M.D., NICHD Director and Matthew W. Gillman, M.D., S.M., emphasize that women and children bear a substantial burden of the U.S. opioid epidemic and that coordinated, long-term research is essential to filling knowledge gaps about how opioids affect women and children.

Scientists and engineers are pioneering new tools and methods to advance healthcare in revolutionary ways. Learn about emerging technologies funded by NICHD.

Adolescent drivers with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have a higher crash rate than adolescents who do not have the disorder, according to a study funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

NICHD was established more than 50 years ago to help understand maternal health and improve pregnancy outcomes. These selected advances highlight NICHD’s contributions to advancing the health and well-being of pregnant women, mothers, and families everywhere.

NIH invites comments on its Plan of Rehabilitation Research to help update the plan.

The earlier in pregnancy a woman quits smoking, the less likely she is to give birth preterm, according to an analysis funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Similarly, the study found that the more a pregnant woman smoked, the higher her chances for preterm birth.

Each year in the United States, 700 women die from pregnancy or childbirth complications – one of the highest maternal death rates in the developed world. Listen to Milestones interview with Dr. Juanita Chinn from NICHD’s Population Dynamics Branch.

An arthritis drug reduced the severity of Zika virus-related birth defects and improved survival among baby mice, according to a study funded in part by the National Institutes of Health.

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have combined whole genome sequencing with machine learning to diagnose rare genetic diseases in newborns in record time. Their approach diagnosed a typical case in an average of 20 hours, compared to the average of 16 days for traditional sequencing.

Approximately 90 percent of teens killed by an intimate partner in the United States are girls, suggests an analysis funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The deaths identified in the study most commonly resulted after the victim either ended or would not enter a romantic relationship with the perpetrator or started a relationship with someone else. The findings provide information for researchers developing interventions to prevent intimate partner homicides among teens.

Some preterm infants produce a protein in response to inflammation that appears to protect them against birth-related brain injury, according to an analysis by researchers funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The substance, known as haptoglobin, is present in umbilical cord blood. Future studies could determine if testing preterm infants for haptoglobin identifies those who would benefit from interventions to prevent brain injury or lessen its effects.

A child born with a structural birth defect has a higher risk of developing childhood cancer. Researchers aren’t sure why such a link exists, but thanks to the NIH Common Fund’s Gabriella Miller Kids First Pediatric Research Program, commonly called Kids First, scientists now have resources and clues to decode this connection.

On April 8, 2019, join community organizations and healthcare professionals to discuss strategies for reducing the rising rate of maternal deaths in the United States.

Researchers have successfully frozen testicular tissue from monkeys too young to produce sperm and used this tissue to produce a pregnancy resulting in live, healthy offspring. The finding is an early step in the development of a method to store testicular tissue for children before they undergo fertility-destroying treatment for cancer or other disorders. The research team was led by Kyle E. Orwig, Ph.D., of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), part of the National Institutes of Health.

Now available in DASH: Researchers can request access to NICHD biospecimens for secondary analyses.

An analysis of a previous study has found more evidence to support giving the steroid betamethasone to pregnant women at risk of late-preterm delivery (between 34 and 36 weeks of gestation), according to a network funded by the National Institutes of Health. Hospital stays for infants whose mothers received the drug cost less on average, compared to stays for infants whose mothers did not take the drug.

Obese and overweight young children whose mothers took DHA—a fat found in fish oil—during pregnancy had lower average blood pressure than those whose mothers did not take the supplement during pregnancy, according to a study funded by the NICHD.

Racial and ethnic disparities in severe maternal morbidity—life-threatening maternal complications associated with childbirth—have persisted and increased at high rates among U.S. women, according to an analysis of nearly 20 years of California hospital records funded by the National Institutes of Health.