News & Updates

Prevention of abuse would help women foster stable long-Term relationships. Women who experienced physical or sexual abuse in childhood or as adults are less likely to be married or in a stable long-term relationship than are other women, according to a large study of low-income women funded by the federal government.

A substance found in the urine of pregnant women can be measured to predict the later development of preeclampsia, according to research from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

The risks from vaginal delivery after a prior Cesarean delivery are low, but are slightly higher than for a repeat Cesarean delivery. This finding is from the largest, most comprehensive study of its kind ever conducted, undertaken by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

In contrast to people who do not have autism, people with autism remember letters of the alphabet in a part of the brain that ordinarily processes shapes, according to a study from a collaborative program of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

Extremely low birth weight infants--the tiniest category of premature infants are much more likely to experience developmental impairments if they acquire an infection during the newborn period, according to a study by the Neonatal Research Network of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, one of the National Institutes of Health.

A team of researchers has determined that an enzyme in sperm is necessary for sperm movement. Mice bred to lack this enzyme produce sperm that cannot swim toward egg cells to fertilize them.

A team of researchers working with cells from mice has overcome a technical barrier and succeeded in growing sperm progenitor cells in laboratory culture.

Groups of immigrant mothers from Japan and South America knew less about child development than did their European American counterparts, according to a study by researchers at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

Pregnant women who are overweight or obese progress through labor more slowly than do normal weight women, according to a study by researchers at the University of North Carolina and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

Infants who cry persistently in an uncontrollable manner without any obvious cause after 12 weeks of age may be at risk for lower IQ scores and poorer fine motor skills by the time they reach 5 years of age, according to researchers from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

A new study suggests that the conventional hormone therapies used to treat fibroid tumors are unlikely to produce much improvement and at best will only temporarily relieve symptoms. However, the study findings also suggest a strategy for developing a new, non-surgical treatment.

From language to literature, from music to mathematics, a single protein appears central to the formation of the long-term memories needed to learn these and all other disciplines, according to a team of researchers led by scientists at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

The Back to Sleep campaign marks its tenth anniversary this October with renewed efforts to reduce the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in the African American community by reminding parents and caregivers to always place infants on their backs to sleep.

Children who have problems breathing during sleep tend to score lower on tests of mental development and intelligence than do other children their age, according to two studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

An NIH roadmap initiative will provide a total of nearly $8 million in funding to seven institutions that can train researchers in multidisciplinary research-research involving teams of specialists from a variety of disciplines.

Regardless of the language they are learning to speak, young children learn vocabulary in fundamentally the same way, according to a study by researchers at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

The injectable contraceptive depot-medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) appears to increase a woman's risk of acquiring the sexually transmitted infections chlamydia and gonorrhea by approximately three fold when compared to women not using a hormonal contraceptive, according to a study jointly funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Agency for International Development's Office of Population and Reproductive Health.

The pineal gland-which regulates the cycles of sleep and waking--appears to have evolved as an indirect way to improve vision, by keeping toxic compounds away from the eye, according to a new theory by a researcher at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health.

The well-being of America's children has shown strong gains in some areas but has declined in others, according to a yearly report by federal agencies compiling statistics on children.

A single dose of the drug nevirapine given at the beginning of labor, when combined with a short course of the anti-HIV drug AZT (zidovudine), dramatically reduces a woman's chances of passing HIV on to her child, according to a study of Thai women funded in part by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.