News

Dr. Cathy Spong became NICHD’s acting director on October 1, 2015. Here she shares her plans for the year and her thoughts on what makes NICHD so unique.

Infants exposed in the womb to a drug used to treat HIV and reduce the transmission of HIV from mother to child, may have lower bone mineral content than those exposed to other anti-HIV drugs, according to a National Institutes of Health study.

Current standards for ultrasound evaluation of fetal growth may lead to misclassification of up to 15 percent of fetuses of minority mothers as being too small, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other institutions.

The National Institutes of Health has announced $46 million in research awards for the Human Placenta Project, an initiative to revolutionize understanding of the placenta. The awards will fund technology development and testing to assess placental function throughout pregnancy, with the ultimate goal of improving pregnancy outcomes and lifelong health.

Treatment with clomiphene, a standard therapy for couples with unexplained infertility, results in more live births than treatment with a potential alternative, letrozole, according to a study of more than 900 couples conducted by a National Institutes of Health research network.

Obese young women may be less likely to use birth control than their normal-weight peers, placing them at greater risk for unintended pregnancy, according to researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Fetuses with enlarged ventricles—the fluid-filled cavities inside the brain—may be less likely than their counterparts to benefit from surgery in the womb to treat spina bifida, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Wale Olukanmi has spent more than two decades as an oncology nurse and physician's assistant at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. As a medical practitioner and father of four, he thought he was well-informed about the health risks and pitfalls of parenting. Then, he completed an all-day training on safe infant sleep practices, where he learned about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), the leading cause of death in babies one month to one year of age, and about other sleep-related infant deaths, such as suffocation.

Extremely preterm infants, those born before the 28th week of pregnancy, are surviving in greater numbers and escaping serious illness, according to a comprehensive review of births in a National Institutes of Health research network.

Rehabilitation medicine includes efforts to improve function and minimize impairment due to illnesses or injuries. Learn more about NICHD’s rehabilitation research.

Ever wonder why regular and diet soda taste so different? Both are sweet, but new research from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) may explain how you can tell one from another. The study, published in the September 1 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, shows for the first time that the moth brain can detect and interpret thousands of individual tastes, not just broad categories of taste as was previously thought.

NICHD recently launched the NICHD Data and Specimen Hub (DASH), a centralized resource for researchers to store and access de-identified data from NICHD-funded research studies for secondary research use.

Brief intervals of exercise during otherwise sedentary periods may offset the lack of more sustained exercise and could protect children against diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, according to a small study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health.

In his recent article in The Huffington Post, Dr. Guttmacher highlights the importance of reading every day with children.

Children learn to read by building a number of skills. Learn more about how reading works in this slideshow.

Between one-third and one-half of individuals in the United States who were infected with HIV around the time of birth may not have sufficient immunity to ward off measles, mumps, and rubella—even though they may have been vaccinated against these diseases. This estimate, from a National Institutes of Health research network, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is based on a study of more than 600 children and youth exposed to HIV in the womb.

A new technology that tracks the electrical activity of the fetal heart offers no advantages over conventional technology in preventing birth complications, according to a new study by the National Institutes of Health.

A high proportion of reproductive-age women may be experiencing pelvic pain that goes untreated, according to a study by researchers from the National Institutes of Health and the University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City.

Alan E. Guttmacher, M.D., director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced today that he will retire from his position effective September 30, 2015. Dr. Guttmacher has led NICHD for nearly six years.

Many new mothers do not receive advice from physicians on aspects of infant care such as sleep position, breastfeeding, immunization and pacifier use, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health.