News & Updates

New online resources stressing the importance of calcium for bone health are now available for middle and high school teachers. The resources are available through the Milk Matters calcium education campaign, sponsored by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

Calcium is important throughout life for strong bones and a healthy body, particularly during the ages of 11 to 15, the years of rapid bone growth. But with fewer than one in 10 girls and only one in four boys ages 9 to 13 at or above their adequate intake of calcium, many young people are not getting the calcium they need to build strong bones now and to prevent osteoporosis later in life.

By the time they reached adulthood, graduates of an intensive early childhood education program for poor children showed higher educational attainment, lower rates of serious crime and incarceration, and lower rates of depressive symptoms than did non-participants in the program, reported researchers in a study funded in part by the National Institutes of Health.

Preterm birth, defined as birth before the fetus is at 37 weeks’ gestation, is a major public health priority for the United States and a major research priority for the NICHD.

The National Institutes of Health will intensify its efforts to find the causes of autism and identify new treatments for the disorder, through a new research program.

Progesterone therapy does not reduce the chances of preterm birth in women pregnant with twins, reported researchers in a network sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

Studies show that fewer than one in 10 girls and only one in four boys ages 9 to 13 are at or above their adequate intake of calcium. Unfortunately, these age groups correspond to the time when bones are growing most rapidly—specifically between ages 11 and 15. Lack of calcium during this prime time for bone growth may put children and teens at risk for weaker bones and increased fractures now and for osteoporosis later in life.

Compared to national statistics for the previous year, there has been an increase in the percentage of children living with at least one working parent and the percentage of children living in households classified as food insecure has declined. High school students were more likely to have taken advanced academic courses and the percentage of young adults who completed high school has increased. The adolescent birth rate has dropped to a record low.

In 2006, there were 73.7 million children from ages 0–17 in the United States, representing 25 percent of the population. Knowing the characteristics of this important segment is important not only for the country’s well-being today, but also for its vitality in the future.

Boys with autism and autism spectrum disorder had higher levels of hormones involved with growth in comparison to boys who do not have autism, reported researchers from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Cincinnati Children's Hospital and the University Of Cincinnati College Of Medicine.

Researchers funded in part by the National Institutes of Health have identified the gene that accounts for most cases of Goltz syndrome, a rare skin disorder that can also affect bone and eye development.

Status epilepticus—continuous, unrelenting seizures that continue beyond several minutes—is a serious, life-threatening condition that affects up to 60,000 children and adults in the United States every year. Such seizures may occur in anyone who has a seizure disorder, often called epilepsy, or in response to such conditions as infection around the brain, brain tumor, head injury, very high fever, or very low blood sugar levels.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Pediatric Seizure Study. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host today, Mr. Bob Bock, Press Officer, NICHD.

Very low birth weight infants are significantly more likely to survive when delivered in hospitals with high-level neonatal intensive care units that care for more than 100 such newborns annually than are those delivered in comparable facilities that provide care to fewer than 100 such children every year.

The scenario unfolds almost every day in the United States. A crowd gathers at a playground, or perhaps on a soccer field. A child has fallen to the ground, gripped by a seizure. Usually, the twitching and jerking stop within a few minutes.

Children appear to approach adult levels of performance on many basic cognitive and motor skills by age 11 or 12, according to a new study coordinated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Just in time for Mother's Day, the National Institutes of Health has released ¿Qué Significa ser Padres? (What Does It Mean To Be Parents?), a free Spanish-language publication geared toward Hispanics who are seeking advice on parenting.

The NICHD, the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (OBSSR), and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the U.S. Department of Education are hosting a three-day conference about the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), from May 8-10, 2007.

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have discovered how a defect in a single master gene disrupts the process by which several genes interact to create myelin, a fatty coating that covers nerve cells and increases the speed and reliability of their electrical signals.

The most recent analysis of a long-term NIH-funded study found that children who received higher quality child care before entering kindergarten had better vocabulary scores in the fifth grade than did children who received lower quality care.