News & Updates

More than two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, and approximately 17% of Americans ages 2 to 19 are overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Obesity increases the likelihood of many serious health problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, certain cancers, fatty liver disease, cirrhosis, liver failure, pregnancy complications, and infertility. Being overweight can be emotionally painful and can significantly impact life expectancy.

Although it could affect anywhere from 9% to 18% or more of women age 18 to 64 at any time during their lives, there are few definitive answers about vulvodynia—a group of conditions characterized by unexplained pain of the vulva.

Infants born to women who used the anti-HIV drug tenofovir as part of an anti-HIV drug regimen during pregnancy do not weigh less at birth and are not of shorter length than infants born to women who used anti-HIV drug regimens that do not include tenofovir during pregnancy, according to findings from a National Institutes of Health network study.

On World Asthma Day 2012, we at the National Institutes of Health stand with the Global Initiative for Asthma to renew our dedication to improving the quality of life for the millions of people living with asthma.

The Chief of NICHD's Perinatology Research Branch and his colleagues recently held a news briefing to describe a prototype treatment for an animal model of cerebral palsy. The researchers injected a bacterial toxin into the uteruses of pregnant rabbits. Like human patients with cerebral palsy, the baby rabbits developed a severe disability affecting their ability to move. When injected with nanoparticles carrying an anti-inflammatory drug, the baby rabbits recovered much of their movement ability.

Asthma is a growing problem in the United States, especially in children. This condition causes the airways of the lungs to swell and narrow, leading to wheezing, shortness of breath, and coughing. Inhaling certain substances or doing certain activities can trigger asthma symptoms. Common asthma triggers include animals, dust, chemicals in the air or in food, exercise, mold, pollen, stress, tobacco smoke, and respiratory infections such as colds.

Car accidents are the leading cause of death and disability for adolescents. As they shift from learning to drive in classrooms and parking lots to real on-road driving situations, they encounter shifts in weather, traffic, and road conditions, as well as potential distractions.

NIH-supported researchers have identified locations at two genes, which, when mutated, appear to increase the likelihood of common childhood obesity. The findings are from a large meta analysis of studies previously conducted in the United States, Europe, and Australia.

Children who grow up learning to speak two languages are better at switching between tasks than are children who learn to speak only one language, according to a study funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. However, the study also found that bilinguals are slower to acquire vocabulary than are monolinguals, because bilinguals must divide their time between two languages while monolinguals focus on only one.

On April 17, 2012, the NICHD Director’s Lecture Series will feature Richard M. Greenwald, Ph.D., and his lecture about Biomechanical Basis of Concussion: Monitoring Head Impact in Sports.

Authors S. Katherine Laughon and Branch Ware were available last week for a news briefing to explain the results of their recent study on changing labor patterns.

Women take longer to give birth today than did women 50 years ago, according to an analysis of nearly 140,000 deliveries conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. The researchers could not identify all of the factors that accounted for the increase, but concluded that the change is likely due to changes in delivery room practice.

In 2011, the NICHD-led Endometriosis: Natural History, Diagnosis, and Outcomes (ENDO) study found that 11 percent of a group of women with no symptoms of endometriosis actually had the disorder. If this finding is applied to all the women in the United States, the number of American women with endometriosis would well exceed previous estimates of 5 million.

Item of Interest: Video Presentation: Role of Research in Understanding, Preventing, and Treating Birth Defects

Distinct patterns of activity--which may indicate a predisposition to care for infants--appear in the brains of adults who view an image of an infant face--even when the child is not theirs, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and in Germany, Italy, and Japan.

Iron is an essential nutrient for the basic health and functioning of the body. Without iron, oxygen is not delivered efficiently to cells, brain growth and development can be hampered, and the body struggles to maintain a strong immune system. Yet more than 2 billion people worldwide do not get enough iron, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) , making iron deficiency (ID) or iron-deficiency anemia (IDA) the world’s most common forms of malnutrition.

Infants and toddlers who have been treated for cancer tend to reach certain developmental milestones later than do their healthy peers, say researchers at the National Institutes of Health and in Italy.

HIV/AIDS continues to be a serious public health concern. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 290,000 women were living with HIV in the United States in 2008.

The NIH Fragile X Research Coordinating Group invites all who are interested to comment on the current National Institutes of Health Research Plan on Fragile X syndrome and associated disorders.

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.