News & Updates

NICHD’s Division of Intramural Population Health Research today announced the appointment of Dr. Stephen E. Gilman as the new Acting Chief of the Health Behavior Branch (HBB).

The National Institutes of Health has launched a subsite of DS-Connect: The Down Syndrome Registry for researchers, clinicians, and other professionals with a scientific interest in Down syndrome to access de-identified data from the registry.

The antiretroviral drugs used to keep HIV at bay are an unqualified success at preventing the spread of the virus from mother to child. The drugs are not only essential for maintaining the health of a pregnant woman with HIV, they have also nearly eliminated the transmission of HIV to her baby. Among U.S. women, the likelihood of a mother passing the virus on to her child is now less than 1%.

One of NICHD’s sister Institutes, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has launched ClinRegs, a public website to help clinical researchers at NIH and in the scientific community at large navigate country-specific, regulatory information as they plan and implement clinical trials.

Nearly 120,000 babies are born with a birth defect* each year in the United States—one baby every 4.5 minutes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Birth control pills are less effective for obese women. Studies have shown that obesity brings with it hormonal changes that can reduce the pill’s effectiveness.

At first glance, it’s hard to see many similarities among people, mice, and zebrafish. But much of what we know about the earliest stages of human development and birth defects come from studying the development of these animals.

The next NICHD Director’s Lecture at the NIH will feature Diana Bianchi, M.D., from Tufts University School of Medicine. Her talk, titled “Changing Paradigms: From Prenatal Genetic Diagnosis to Fetal Individualized Medicine,” will take place on January 21, 2015, 9:00–10:00 a.m., in Lipsett Amphitheater, at NIH’s Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md.

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health have entered into an agreement with biotechnology company Vtesse, Inc., of Gaithersburg, Maryland, to develop treatments for Niemann-Pick disease type C (NPC) and other lysosomal storage disorders.

The standard treatment for newborns whose brains were deprived of oxygen appears to work better than proposed alternatives, according to a study from a National Institutes of Health research network.

The Maternal and Pediatric Infectious Disease Branch (MPIDB) was formed in 1988 as the Pediatric, Adolescent, and Maternal AIDS Branch. At that time, its mission was to support and conduct domestic and international research on the HIV/AIDS epidemic with a special focus on infants, children, adolescents, and women.

Young children who have long-term high blood sugar levels are more likely to have slower brain growth, according to researchers at centers including the National Institutes of Health.

Six young women with a disorder that mimics menopause have gene alterations that hamper the repair of damaged DNA, report researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Today NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins issued a statement on the future of the National Children’s Study, following a report by the National Children's Study Working Group at a public meeting of the Advisory Committee to the Director.

The NIH recently released Down Syndrome Directions: The National Institutes of Health Research Plan on Down Syndrome, an updated strategy to advance research related to Down syndrome.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have found a duplication of a short stretch of the X chromosome in some people with a rare disorder that causes excessive childhood growth. They believe that a single gene within the region likely has a large influence on how much children grow.

For 2 days in April 2014, military families, researchers, educational and health care service providers, and other stakeholders came together on the NIH campus to talk about military families. They were participants in a conference on Military-Connected Children with Special Health Care Needs and Their Families.

More than 50 million Americans, about 1 in 5 people, are living with a disability. People with disabilities tend to be less physically active than people without disabilities and have higher rates of corresponding health problems such as obesity, heart disease, hypertension and stroke.

Nearly 55 percent of U.S. infants are placed to sleep with bedding that increases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, despite recommendations against the practice, report researchers at the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other institutions.

Using sophisticated computer-based technology to analyze genetic data obtained from uterine tissue, researchers have identified patterns of genetic activity that can be used to diagnose endometriosis, an often-painful condition that occurs when tissue that normally lines the inside of the uterus grows outside the uterus. The prototype diagnostic method, developed with funding from the National Institutes of Health, can not only distinguish endometriosis from other disorders of the uterus, but can also identify the severity of the disease.