News & Updates

The newly released 2011 DIR Annual Report reviews the latest basic, clinical, and translational research being pursued by the staff scientists within DIR at the NICHD. Contributing to this effort are 79 tenured and tenure-track investigators and approximately 1,200 administrative and research staff. In 2011, DIR project areas ranged from vaccine development to genomics, from reproduction to regenerative medicine, and from the neurosciences and early human development to biophysics and imaging.

The NICHD continues to advance understanding of the effects of HIV/AIDS on infants, children, young people, women, and families.

On this World Pneumonia Day, it is important to keep in mind that a major impediment stands in the way of global efforts to prevent childhood pneumonia.

The Second Lecture in This Series Features NICHD Grantee Dr. Esther Duflo.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have observed two previously unknown steps in the spread of the malaria parasite through the bloodstream. And in laboratory cultures, the researchers interfered with one of these steps, raising the possibility that new drug treatments could be developed to combat the disease.

This December, the NICHD joins the international community in recognizing the 21st annual AIDS Awareness Month. Research by the NICHD, several partner Institutes at NIH, and other organizations has helped change the outlook for those with HIV/AIDS in the United States and abroad. While it is good to reflect on how far we’ve come, the NICHD keeps its focus on the many challenges that remain for the future.

New guidelines to assist health care workers in preventing and treating the secondary infections that can afflict U.S. children exposed to, or infected with, HIV, were published by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A recent, scheduled interim data and safety review of a clinical study comparing anti-HIV treatment regimens based on either nevirapine (NVP) or ritonavir-boosted lopinavir (LPV/r) has found LPV/r to be more effective than NVP in HIV-infected children who received a single dose of NVP at birth.

In many poor countries, mothers with HIV face a stark choice: to nurse their infants, and risk passing on HIV through their breast milk--or to formula feed, and deprive their infants of much of the natural immunity needed to protect against fatal diseases of early infancy. Now, two studies supported by the National Institutes of Health offer insights into preventing early death and HIV infection among breastfeeding infants of mothers with HIV in these countries.

Do iron supplements worsen the course of malaria? Researchers aren't sure, and the uncertainty has jeopardized efforts to treat the debilitating effects of iron deficiency in parts of the world where malaria and other infectious diseases are common.

An extended course of the antiretroviral drug nevirapine (NVP) helps the breastfeeding babies of HIV-infected mothers remain HIV-negative and live longer, according to several new studies presented at the 15th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections held in Boston from February 3-6.

Malaria—a disease caused by a single-celled parasite—can result in severe headache, high fever, chills, and vomiting. Worldwide, an estimated 300 to 500 million clinical cases of malaria occur each year, and the disease kills more than 1 million children annually.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have developed an experimental vaccine that could, theoretically, eliminate malaria from entire geographic regions, by eradicating the malaria parasite from an area's mosquitoes.

Researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development have determined the sequence in which the malaria parasite disperses from the red blood cells it infects. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is one of the National Institutes of Health.

NIH researchers have found pore-like holes in the membranes of red blood cells infected by the deadliest form of the malaria parasite.