News & Updates

This month’s NICHD Research Perspectives podcast focuses on adrenal gland disorders and research conducted by NICHD staff at the NIH Clinical Center.

Adults who have congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a disorder of the adrenal glands, may be eligible to take part in a study at the National Institutes of Health on the effectiveness of a new pump which delivers missing adrenal hormones in a manner more closely matching their release by the adrenal glands.

With 11 research programs, more than 75 researchers, and more than 1,100 support staff, the NICHD's DIR is among the largest at the NIH. But with good reason—The NICHD's DIR also has one of the broadest research portfolios at the NIH, covering nearly all aspects of human development and reproduction.

A team of NIH researchers, in collaboration with scientists from the University of Utah (Salt Lake City) and Tufts Medical Center (Boston), have identified a new syndrome involving two rare neuroendocrine tumors and a rare blood disease. The syndrome was observed in four female patients who had multiple paraganglioma and somatostatinoma tumors and the blood disease polycythemia.

On December 5, 2012, the NICHD released the Scientific Vision: The Next Decade, the culmination of a collaborative process that began in 2011 to identify the most promising scientific opportunities for the Institute and the research community to pursue over the next decade. The Vision statement was made available during the NICHD’s 50th anniversary colloquium.

​Alan Guttmacher, M.D., Director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) announced a number of changes to streamline the institute’s organizational structure and accelerate the exchange of scientific ideas.

A document charting a research course for the many collaborators who share an interest in promoting the science concerning human development through the life span, child health, women's health, and rehabilitation research is now available online.

As the Institute marks its golden anniversary, we look back on the NICHD's early years, its scientific accomplishments, and its future.

The newly released 2011 DIR Annual Report reviews the latest basic, clinical, and translational research being pursued by the staff scientists within DIR at the NICHD. Contributing to this effort are 79 tenured and tenure-track investigators and approximately 1,200 administrative and research staff. In 2011, DIR project areas ranged from vaccine development to genomics, from reproduction to regenerative medicine, and from the neurosciences and early human development to biophysics and imaging.

The 2010 DIR Annual Report illustrates the impressive accomplishments that result when dozens of PIs, more than 350 trainees, and approximately 1,200 staff all work toward the same goal of improving human health.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health and the University of Hong Kong have discovered that high levels of a particular protein in cancer cells are a reliable indicator that a cancer will spread.

A gene implicated in Carney complex, a rare disorder of the adrenal glands, appears to function as a molecular switch to limit cell growth and division, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions. Mice lacking functional copies of the gene in the adrenal glands developed an overgrowth of adrenal tissue and were more susceptible to tumors in the gland.

The Division’s research programs address topics ranging from molecular and cellular biology, genetics, and endocrine and genetic disorders, to physical biology, neurosciences, immunology, reproduction, and behavioral research. Its projects are organized around the theme of the orchestration of life by molecular messengers.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have discovered that a rare tumor of the adrenal glands appears to result from a genetic deficiency of an important enzyme. The enzyme is one of a class of enzymes involved in halting a cell's response to hormones and appears to stop cells from dividing.

A panel convened by the National Institutes of Health issued recommendations to help physicians evaluate a particular class of tumors of the adrenal glands and determine which should be removed and which should be left alone.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Development Program will hold a State-of-the-Science Conference on Management of the Clinically Inapparent Adrenal Mass (Incidentaloma) on February 4-6, 2002, in the main auditorium of the William H. Natcher Building on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland.

People with 21-hydroxylase deficiency-a common yet little known disorder causing early puberty and masculinizing features in both males and females-also lack sufficient quantities of the stress hormone adrenaline, according to a study by researchers at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).