News & Updates

A single dose of the drug nevirapine given at the beginning of labor, when combined with a short course of the anti-HIV drug AZT (zidovudine), dramatically reduces a woman's chances of passing HIV on to her child, according to a study of Thai women funded in part by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

High school graduates from immigrant families are as likely to go on to college and to perform as well academically as their peers from American-born families, according to a study funded in part by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), one of the National Institutes of Health.

Multivitamin supplements containing high doses of the vitamin B complex, as well as vitamins C and E, given to HIV-infected women during pregnancy and for more than 5 years after they gave birth reduced the symptoms of AIDS, according to a study of Tanzanian women supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the John E. Fogarty International Center (FIC) for Advanced Study in the Health Sciences, both of the National Institutes of Health.

After four weeks of age, infants who breast feed from mothers infected with HIV continue to be at risk for infection with HIV for as long as they breastfeed, according to an analysis conducted and funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

The results of an international survey show that young adolescents in the United States are no more likely to engage in violent behavior than are youth in 4 other countries.

Fibroid tumors-the sometimes painful uterine growths affecting many American women-lack a key protein that plays a role in holding tissues together, according to a study by researchers from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

Some of the genes that allow nerve cells and some other types of cells to send elaborate chemical messages to each other appear to have been transferred to animals or their immediate ancestors from bacteria eons ago, according to a study by researchers from the National Library of Medicine and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, both part of the National Institutes of Health.

A team of U.S. and Irish researchers has come one step closer to understanding why a high proportion of the population is genetically at risk for neural tube defects, according to a genetic study by researchers in Ireland and at two of the National Institutes of Health, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Human Genome Research Institute.

A team of researchers has discovered a gene for Cornelia de Lange Syndrome, a disorder consisting of mental retardation, heart defects and a number of physical abnormalities.

A brain imaging study has shown that, after they overcome their reading disability, the brains of formerly poor readers begin to function like the brains of good readers, showing increased activity in a part of the brain that recognizes words.

The largest study of its kind, designed to track the development of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people who received human growth hormone from cadavers, has found that the vast majority of those who received the hormone did not contract the fatal condition.

Newborns whose mothers drank alcohol heavily during pregnancy had damage to the nerves in the arms and legs, according to a study by researchers at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, one of the National Institutes of Health.

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is introducing a new series of Web games for children on its Milk Matters Web site.

Abnormal levels of two molecules found in the blood appear to predict the development of preeclampsia, a life-threatening complication of pregnancy, according to a study by researchers at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston.

African American parents now have an important new resource to help them support their children in times of stress or crisis.

U.S. teens are more likely to be overweight than are teens from 14 other industrialized nations, according to survey information collected in 1997 and 1998 by two agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services as well as institutions in 13 European countries and in Israel.

The cold winter months bring an increase in the number of infants who die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, according to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, one of the National Institutes of Health.

Media availability with leading health and environment officials to provide the latest information on the development of the National Children's Study, a groundbreaking, long-term research project to examine the environmental influences on children's health and development.

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today announced a new five-year research initiative with the Department of Education to find the best ways to prepare preschool children for later success in school.

One of the National Institutes of Health has begun a concerted effort to determine the extent and causes of stillbirth- the death of a fetus at 20 or more weeks of pregnancy.