News & Updates

Sleep plays an important role in memory, attention, emotional well-being, and overall physical health. In 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) advised middle and high schools to change their start times to 8:30 a.m. or later to enable students to get the recommended 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep on school nights.

The National Institutes of Health has launched a new initiative to identify biomarkers and track the progression of Alzheimer’s in people with Down syndrome.

Juggling child care to fit work schedules, bringing work home to fit around family responsibilities, ensuring neither work nor family gets short-changed—these are a few of the things that can make life stressful. How does managing these responsibilities affect the health of parents and children? Are there ways to adjust life in the workplace to improve family health and to meet the needs of employers at the same time?

Many U.S. hospitals may be missing the chance to find out if babies and toddlers have been physically abused. Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health found a large difference in whether hospitals followed long-standing guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics to order additional x-rays for children suspected of being victims of abuse.

Recent advances in prosthetic materials, technology, and design have improved choices for injured veterans and many others who have had a limb amputated as a result of a congenital condition, injury, or disease.

The recommendation to delay delivery of otherwise healthy infants until at least the 39th week of pregnancy does not appear to have increased stillbirths in the United States, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions.

The drug-susceptible form of Staphylococcus aureus, a common bacterium that inhabits the body, may account for a greater number of infections among hospitalized newborns than the antibiotic-resistant form, according to researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health.

HIV-infected children exposed in the womb to nevirapine, a drug used to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission, can safely and effectively transition to efavirenz, a similar drug recommended for older children and adults, according to a study funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), part of the National Institutes of Health.

As a person with Down syndrome, David Egan has made it his mission to fulfill his own potential and to help other people with Down syndrome fulfill theirs. Here he discusses his work, his belief in the power of research, and his hopes for the future.

A single variation in the gene for brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) may influence obesity in children and adults, according to a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Children infected with HIV since birth benefit from two doses of the chickenpox vaccine, particularly when the first dose is given at least three months after the initiation of anti-HIV treatment, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month, an opportunity to spread awareness and enhance understanding of Down syndrome, a congenital disorder in people who have an extra 21st chromosome.

Brain scans taken of newborns who received cooling treatment after blood or oxygen deprivation to the brain can predict the extent of a child’s recovery by 6 or 7 years of age, according to a study by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research network.

An instructional program for parents helps young children retain the literacy skills and positive learning behaviors acquired in Head Start through to the end of the kindergarten year, according to researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health.

In an effort to boost HIV testing, as well as the use of anti-HIV therapy among pregnant women in rural villages, researchers supported in part by NICHD assessed the effectiveness of a church-based screening program in Southern Nigeria.

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have shown that treating hypoglycemia, or low blood glucose, in newborns according to current recommendations is safe and appears to prevent brain damage. 

A blood test that detects antibodies to the sexually transmitted bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis may be helpful in screening infertile women for pregnancy outcomes, according to a new study.

Dr. Cathy Spong became NICHD’s acting director on October 1, 2015. Here she shares her plans for the year and her thoughts on what makes NICHD so unique.

Infants exposed in the womb to a drug used to treat HIV and reduce the transmission of HIV from mother to child, may have lower bone mineral content than those exposed to other anti-HIV drugs, according to a National Institutes of Health study.

Current standards for ultrasound evaluation of fetal growth may lead to misclassification of up to 15 percent of fetuses of minority mothers as being too small, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other institutions.