News & Updates

Drug labels for doxycycline, clindamycin and caffeine citrate now include better information for healthcare providers on recommended usage and dosage in pediatric populations.

James A. Griffin, Ph.D., named new Chief of NICHD’s Child Development and Behavior Branch

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have discovered in mice what they believe is the first known genetic mutation to improve cognitive flexibility—the ability to adapt to changing situations.

Researchers have developed a test to measure the expressive language skills of people with Fragile X syndrome, a genetic disorder that may result in intellectual disability, cognitive impairment and symptoms of autism spectrum disorder. Expressive language refers to the use of words to convey meaning to others. The work was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health.

A research team funded by the National Institutes of Health has updated an online tool to provide information for clinicians and parents on outcomes for extremely preterm infants. The key change in the update was the incorporation of data from the hospital where the infant was born, which the researchers found was as important as gestational age in determining infant outcome.

Antioxidant supplements do not improve semen quality among men with infertility, according to a new NICHD-supported study.

The NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery—an assessment of cognitive functioning for adults and children participating in neuroscience research—can be adapted to people with intellectual disabilities by modifying some test components and making accommodations for the test-takers’ disabilities, according to researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. The adaptations ensure that the battery can be used to assess the cognitive ability of people with intellectual disabilities who have a mental age of 5 years and above, providing objective measures that could be used in a wide variety of studies.

Duane Alexander, M.D., a former director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), died on February 16, 2020, from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 79 years old.

Human milk oligosaccharides found in breastmilk may influence a child’s growth from infancy through early childhood, according to an NICHD-supported study.

NICHD funded Cohen’s award-winning work on growth factors for most of his career.

NICHD marks a 10-year partnership with WALTHAM® PetCare Science Institute, a division of Mars, to support research exploring the impact of interactions between animals and human companions.

Despite similar rates of enrollment into medical care, youth with HIV have much lower rates of viral suppression—reducing HIV to undetectable levels—compared to adults, according to an analysis funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Homicide is a leading cause of death among pregnant and postpartum women in Louisiana, according to an analysis of birth and death records from 2016 and 2017. The study, appearing as a research letter in JAMA Pediatrics, was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), part of the National Institutes of Health.

NICHD has launched a partnership with Safe Kids Worldwide, a global non-profit working to protect kids from preventable injuries through a network of more than 400 coalitions.

To expand the reach of its crowdsourcing pregnancy research project, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently launched a Spanish version of PregSource®.

Children as young as 6 years old who underwent fetal surgery to repair a common birth defect of the spine are more likely to walk independently and have fewer follow-up surgeries, compared to those who had traditional corrective surgery after birth, according to researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Daily low-dose aspirin, from as early as the sixth week of pregnancy through the 36th week, may lower the risk for preterm birth among first-time mothers, suggests a study funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Women who breastfed their infants exclusively for 7 to 12 months may have a significantly lower risk of early menopause than their peers who breastfed their infants for less than a month, according to an analysis funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Read about NICHD’s notable research findings and activities from 2019.

Identical twins with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience large differences in symptom severity even though they share the same DNA, according to an analysis funded by the National Institutes of Health. The findings suggest that identifying the causes of this variability may inform the treatment of ASD-related symptoms.