News & Updates

A version of a gene has been linked to autism in families that have more than one child with the disorder. Inheriting two copies of this version more than doubled a child's risk of developing an autism spectrum disorder, scientists supported by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) have discovered.

The drug misoprostol provides a safe, convenient, and inexpensive means to prevent postpartum hemorrhage, a major killer of women in developing countries. The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Missouri, India's Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, and the National Institutes of Health.

A compendium of findings from a study funded by the National Institutes of Health reveals that a child's family life has more influence on a child's development through age four and a half than does a child's experience in child care.

What is the best way to teach kids about science? A new report seeks to help children learn science more effectively by improving the way science is taught in the classroom.

Need information on reading disability? Want to know how much calcium is in a serving of broccoli? Trying to find out how to apply for a research grant to study spinal cord development in zebrafish? Check out http://www.nichd.nih.gov.

The Institute’s mission to understand and improve the health of children, adults, and families reaches beyond the United States to include communities worldwide. As part of this mission, the NICHD and the Fogarty International Center are pleased to sponsor the 8th Annual Lawton Chiles International Lecture on Maternal and Child Health in the Americas.

Research conducted through the Global Network for Women’s and Children’s Health Research has found that the drug misoprostol provides a safe, convenient, and inexpensive means to prevent postpartum hemorrhage, a major killer of women in developing countries. This finding again highlights that the NICHD’s mission to understand and improve the health of children, adults, and families reaches beyond the United States to include communities worldwide.

Led by Yvonne T. Maddox, deputy director of the NICHD, a delegation from the NIH as well as state and local officials from Mississippi will convene in Jackson this week for a unique outreach event.

The basic research effort to implicate soluble endoglin (sEng) and soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase 1 (sFlt-1) in preeclampsia was led by a coauthor of the current paper, S. Ananth Karumanchi, M.D., a nephrologist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Preeclampsia is a disorder of pregnancy that strikes without warning. The condition results when pregnant women develop high blood pressure and protein in the urine. Preeclampsia is estimated to complicate from 3 to 5 percent of all pregnancies.

High levels of two proteins in the blood of pregnant women appear to indicate the subsequent development of preeclampsia, a life-threatening complication of pregnancy, report a team of researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Children who are overweight as toddlers or preschoolers are more likely to be overweight or obese in early adolescence, report researchers in a collaborative study by the NIH and several academic institutions.

The journey of hope to improve the lives of infants born with oxygen deprivation has taken 65 years. Loss of oxygen to the brain may result in death or a lifetime of blindness, mental retardation, or cerebral palsy. In October 2005, Seetha Shankaran and her colleagues in the NICHD Neonatal Research Network reported that lowering a newborn’s body temperature a few degrees could reduce the likelihood of death or disability associated with depleted oxygen.

Every day, physicians and new parents must struggle with the type of care to provide extremely low birthweight infants, the smallest, most delicate category of preterm infants. These infants are born in the 22nd through the 25th week of pregnancy—far earlier than the 40 weeks of a full term pregnancy. Most die soon after birth. Although some survive and reach adulthood unaffected, others experience some degree of life-long disability.

The images depict a membrane protein in a cellular organelle known as a lysosome. The image on the right shows a conventional fluorescent image of a portion of the lyososome, whereas the image on the left shows the corresponding PALM image in the region outlined.

A recent study provides evidence that autism affects the functioning of virtually the entire brain, and is not limited to the brain areas involved with social interactions, communication behaviors, and reasoning abilities, as had been previously thought. The study, conducted by scientists in a research network supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), found that autism also affects a broad array of skills and abilities, including those involved with sensory perception, movement, and memory.

A large study funded by the National Institutes of Health today provided the clearest picture yet of the prevalence in the U.S. population of mutations in two genes associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.

Researchers at Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus, the National Institutes of Health, and Florida State University have developed and applied a new light microscopy technique that will allow them to determine the arrangement of proteins that make up the individual organelles, or structures, within a cell.

Interview with Duane Alexander on the Report on America's Children, 2006.

Two scientists at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Develpment (NICHD), John Robbins, MD, and Rachel Schneerson, MD, will receive the World Health Organization Children's Vaccine Initiative Pasteur Award for Recent Contributions in Vaccine Development for the landmark development of a polysaccharide-protein conjugate vaccine for Hemophilus influenzae type b (Hib).