News

U.S. rates of pregnancy-associated homicide—deaths that occur among women who are pregnant or had been pregnant within one year—rose in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent NICHD-funded study.

Challenge competitions offer a mechanism to quickly bring in diverse voices and expertise to innovate and problem-solve. This month, NICHD and partners launched two challenges focused on improving our nation’s maternal health: the RADx® Tech for Maternal Health Challenge and the Connecting the Community for Maternal Health Challenge.

The National Institutes of Health is offering up to $8 million in cash prizes to accelerate development of technologies to improve maternal health outcomes for those who live in areas lacking access to maternity care.

The National Institutes of Health has launched a $3 million challenge competition to encourage community-based and advocacy organizations in the United States to develop the infrastructure and capabilities necessary to conduct maternal health research.

Scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health have developed a same-day test to identify abnormal fetal chromosomes.

NIH recently released three funding opportunity announcements inviting applications for the Maternal Health Research Centers of Excellence initiative, which will develop and evaluate innovative approaches to reduce pregnancy-related complications and deaths and promote maternal health equity.

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

Compared to pregnant people without a disability, pregnant people with disabilities may have about two and a half times the risk of experiencing intimate partner violence in the year before pregnancy and during pregnancy, suggests a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The study authors conclude that health care providers should be vigilant in screening persons with disabilities for intimate partner violence before and during pregnancy and refer them to appropriate information and resources.

The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines may offer slightly more protection during pregnancy against SARS-CoV-2, compared to the Jansen/Johnson & Johnson vaccine, suggests a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Vaccination during the first and third trimesters appears to result in higher antibody-stimulated immune responses than vaccination in the second trimester. It also may lead to greater transfer of antibodies from maternal blood to the placenta.

Giving the hormone adiponectin to pregnant mice with obesity prevented later life obesity and related health conditions in their offspring, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The findings suggest that adiponectin, a hormone produced by fat cells, could play a role in reducing the lifelong obesity risk of children born to mothers with obesity during pregnancy.

The increase in pregnancy complications linked to air pollution exposure could result from the pollutants’ direct effects on the placenta, suggests a study in mice funded by the National Institutes of Health. Placentas of mice exposed to a mixture of common urban air pollutants before and during pregnancy were inflamed and had a loss of blood vessel cells. The study authors say the findings could provide insight into how air pollution might affect pregnancies and lead to strategies for preventing pregnancy complications.

Maternal obesity before pregnancy may increase the risk of asthma in early childhood, suggests a study by the National Institutes of Health. Children born to mothers with obesity were more likely than those born to mothers without obesity to have persistent wheezing, an indication of asthma.

A new method to detect genetic material from the placenta in the blood of pregnant people could potentially identify the risk for gestational, or pregnancy-related, diabetes in the first trimester, suggests a small study funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The placenta supports pregnancy and influences the lifelong health of both mother and child. Yet it is the least understood, and least studied, of all human organs. In a guest post for the NIH Director’s Blog, Dr. Bianchi discusses work from NICHD’s Human Placenta Project to understand how the placenta functions in real time during pregnancy.

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

Researchers have developed a calculator to estimate the risk that cytomegalovirus (CMV) will pass to a fetus during pregnancy. By offering a noninvasive way to predict the chance of congenital CMV based on individual characteristics, this tool may help healthcare providers counsel pregnant people with CMV.

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

To help spur innovation against a growing maternal health crisis, NICHD launched the Decoding Maternal Morbidity Data Challenge last year. Learn about the winning proposals.

Life-threatening pregnancy complications known as severe maternal morbidity (SMM) appear to be associated with an increased length of hospital stay for infants and an increase in the cost of caring for them, suggests a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The findings support the hypothesis that infants of mothers with SMM may also be at risk for severe complications. The authors concluded that helping patients to reduce their risk factors—in early pregnancy or before conception—may reduce the chances for SMM and improve the health of infants.

Vaccinating women against SARS-CoV-2 in mid to late pregnancy could provide their infants at least some protection against COVID-19 through six months of age, suggests a small study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Compared to infants born to mothers who had COVID-19 during pregnancy, infants born to vaccinated mothers were much more likely to have antibodies against the virus.