News & Updates

Read about select research advances supported by NICHD in 2024, including work on women’s health, child and adolescent health, medical rehabilitation, health disparities, and more.

Researchers developed a simulation to estimate the life span of youth with HIV and found that some could lose from 10 to 20 years of life, compared to youth without HIV. Life expectancy depends on factors such as whether they acquired HIV around the time of birth or later in life, or received ideal care.

NICHD is co-hosting several workshops and virtual meetings on women’s health topics in summer 2024. Please consider registering to participate in discussions and to help shape future research and care.

Four children enrolled in an NIH-funded study have remained free of detectable HIV for more than one year after their antiretroviral therapy was paused to see if they could achieve HIV remission, researchers report. The findings suggest that very early HIV treatment enables unique features of the neonatal immune system to limit HIV reservoir development, increasing the prospect of HIV remission.

For the 35th observance of World AIDS Day, NICHD reflects on recent progress in HIV/AIDS research to optimize outcomes for infants and children, tailor care for adolescents and young adults, promote reproductive health, and support pregnancy and parenthood.

Compared to annual HIV screening alone, generic daily oral HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with HIV screening every three months would result in fewer HIV acquisitions, longer life expectancy, and fewer HIV-associated costs among young men who have sex with men in the United States.

NIH awarded $50 million for a research program that will identify youth at risk for or with HIV in eight African countries and get them into medical care. The five-year effort will focus on locations with limited research capacity and with populations underrepresented in HIV research, such as commercial sex workers and drug users.

The risk for hypertensive disorders of pregnancy was higher for pregnant women with HIV if they had low CD4+ immune cell counts in the first or second trimester, or if they began taking antiretroviral drug regimens after 20 weeks of pregnancy, rather than at conception. The findings underscore the importance of getting HIV under control before becoming pregnant.

Young adults born with HIV who report average or high levels of social support are more likely to maintain viral suppression than peers with low social support, according to a U.S. study funded by NIH. The findings also suggest that having sufficient social support is particularly important just prior to a young adult’s transition from pediatric to adult HIV care.

HIV-free children whose mothers started taking anti-HIV medications while they were in the womb may be at higher risk for lower-than-average scores in one or more areas of development at age 5, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Read about NICHD’s research findings and activities from 2022.

A safe, highly effective, reversible method of male contraception would fill an important public health need. Additionally, multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs)—products that prevent both pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections—would increase sexual and reproductive health options for both women and men. NICHD supports a broad range of contraceptive research, including efforts to develop male contraceptives and MPTs.

The Division of Intramural Research provides fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems through basic, clinical, and population-based research.

Youth aged 13 to 24 years who were offered HIV testing by a digital health tool on a tablet computer were at least as likely to accept as those who were offered testing face-to-face, according to an NICHD-funded study.

Despite similar rates of enrollment into medical care, youth with HIV have much lower rates of viral suppression—reducing HIV to undetectable levels—compared to adults, according to an analysis funded by the National Institutes of Health.

More than 20% of pregnant women beginning anti-HIV treatment were prescribed an antiretroviral treatment that did not meet federal guidelines for use during pregnancy, according to an analysis funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Nano-sized vesicles released by certain bacteria that inhabit the vagina may protect against HIV infection, suggests a study of human cells and tissues by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and the University of Bologna, Italy. Known as extracellular vesicles, these bubble-like particles are produced by many kinds of cells and are thought to transport molecules from one cell to another.

Children born to women on HIV therapy containing the drug efavirenz were 2 to 2.5 times more likely to have microcephaly, or small head size, compared to children born to women on regimens of other antiretroviral drugs, according to an analysis funded by the National Institutes of Health. The children with microcephaly also had a higher risk for developmental delays, compared to children with normal head size.

Children born to women on HIV therapy containing the drug dolutegravir since conception have a slightly higher risk of neural tube defects, compared to children born to women on regimens of other antiretroviral drugs.

Truvada, a drug combination that reduces the chances of HIV infection in high-risk people may result in small, yet persistent bone loss in younger adolescent males, suggests a study supported by the NICHD. The researchers added, however, that the protection against HIV offered by Truvada far outweighs any possible risks from bone loss.