News

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.

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have identified three principal factors linked to whether caregivers place infants to sleep on their backs. Those three factors are: whether they received a physician's recommendation to place infants only on their backs for sleep, fear that the infant might choke while sleeping on the back, and concerns for an infant's comfort while sleeping on the back.

Alan E. Guttmacher, M.D., is the new acting director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), one of the 27 institutes and centers that comprise the National Institutes of Health.

Alan Guttmacher, M.D., will assume the duties of NICHD Acting Director on December 1, 2009. He will take over for Susan B. Shurin, M.D., Deputy Director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). NIH Director Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., made the announcement at an all-hands meeting and thanked the Institute’s leadership and staff for their continued support during this period of transition.

Women who experience preeclampsia, a serious complication of pregnancy, may have an increased risk for reduced thyroid functioning later in life, report a team of researchers from the National Institutes of Health and other institutions.

Studying drugs in pediatric populations is challenging because drugs often affect children differently than they do adults. The scarcity of pediatric studies limits the ability of doctors and scientists to predict drug dosing, safety and efficacy in children. To address this gap, the National Institutes of Health announced today 18 grants to help determine outcome measures and increase the likelihood of success of future trials of treatments for children.

Researchers funded in part by the National Institutes of Health have discovered how to transform human embryonic stem cells into germ cells, the embryonic cells that ultimately give rise to sperm and eggs. The advance will allow researchers to observe human germ cells--previously inaccessible--in laboratory dishes.

Dr. Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz recently joined a distinguished group of American and international scientists when she was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Institutes of Health today announced the establishment of a research program to enhance newborn screening, in memory of the son of National Football League Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly.

Today, the NICHD debuted its Hunter Kelly Newborn Screening Research Program in honor of Hunter and his family’s work.

The National Children's Study (NCS) is a unique epidemiological study of children's environmental health. The largest child health study ever undertaken in the United States, the NCS will longitudinally assess the effects of the chemical, biological, psychosocial-cultural, and physical environments on child health and development, with a special emphasis on gene-environment interaction and gene expression. The NCS will follow women through pregnancy and birth and their children through 21 years of age. Further information about the Study is available at http// www.nationalchildrensstudy.gov.

Susan B. Shurin, M.D., assumed the duties of Acting Director of NICHD on October 1, 2009. Last week, Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., NIH Director, announced that Dr. Shurin would serve as Acting Director of NICHD upon the departure of Duane Alexander, M.D., for the Fogarty International Center.

A National Institutes of Health network study provided the first conclusive evidence that treating pregnant women who have even the mildest form of gestational diabetes can reduce the risk of common birth complications among infants, as well as blood pressure disorders among mothers.

Duane Alexander, M.D., Director of the NICHD, announced recently that he would soon leave the institute on October 1, 2009, to begin a new assignment within the NIH.

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have developed an experimental technique with the potential to prevent a class of hereditary disorders passed on from mother to child. The technique, as yet conducted only in nonhuman primates,involves transferring the hereditary material from one female's egg into another female's egg from which the hereditary material has been removed.

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.

Imitation, the old saying goes, is the sincerest form of flattery. It also appears to be an ancient interpersonal mechanism that promotes social bonding and, presumably, sets the stage for relative strangers to coalesce into groups of friends, according to a study by a team of scientists at the National Institutes of Health and two Italian research institutions.

The entire world owes a debt to Eunice Kennedy Shriver for her foresight in calling for an institute at the National Institutes of Health to study the myriad aspects of human development, both as it unfolds without problems and when medical and environmental factors prevent it from doing so.

The National Institutes of Health has developed a research plan to advance the understanding of fragile X syndrome and its associated conditions, fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome and fragile X-associated primary ovarian insufficiency. Fragile X syndrome causes intellectual and developmental disabilities and results from a mutation in a gene on the X chromosome.

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have completed a critical first step in the eventual development of a technique to retain fertility in women with cancer who require treatments that might otherwise make them unable to have children.