Newborn News and Research

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Newborn babies show preference for kindness over cruelty

They've barely opened their eyes, but newborn babies already seem to prefer nice behaviors.

16 Jul 2025

Person-focused approach explains distinct autism genetic subtypes

Research identifies four autism classes driven by different genes, enhancing understanding of ASD's genetic complexity and improving diagnostic approaches.

15 Jul 2025

Research reveals high mortality risk for mothers involved with children’s social care

A third of women who died during or in the year after pregnancy were known to Children's Social Care – higher than previously reported, new research reveals.

11 Jul 2025

Training boosts skin-to-skin contact between parents and newborns

Targeted training interventions for both health professionals and parents significantly increase the amount of skin-to-skin contact between newborns and their parents in the first 48 hours after birth. The proportion of babies who received nearly 24 hours of skin contact over the first 24 hours increased from 33 per cent to 58 per cent.

8 Jul 2025

Republican megabill will mean higher health costs for many Americans

President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" cuts federal spending on Medicaid and Affordable Care Act marketplaces by about $1 trillion over a decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, threatening the physical and financial health of tens of millions of Americans.

2 Jul 2025

Europe’s patchwork approach to biliary atresia screening revealed

Published (DOI: 10.1136/wjps-2025-001026) on May 12, 2025, in World Journal of Pediatric Surgery, researchers from Geneva University Hospitals conducted the first scoping review of BA screening efforts across Europe.

1 Jul 2025

Prenatal checkups linked to healthier birth weights in West Africa

In The Gambia, a small country in West Africa, 1 in 10 newborns have a low birth weight — less than 5.5 pounds — and face daunting challenges.

27 Jun 2025

Kennedy’s vaccine advisers sow doubts as scientists protest US pivot on shots

As fired and retired scientists rallied outside in the Atlanta heat, an advisory panel that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. handpicked to replace experts he'd fired earlier met inside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's headquarters to plan a more skeptical vaccine future.

27 Jun 2025

Global report calls for innovation and cooperation to improve newborn health

More effective platforms for drug and medical device development and better cross sector engagement are urgently required to prevent the 'unacceptably high' newborn death rate, according to a global report.

26 Jun 2025

Newborns and Alzheimer's patients have elevated blood levels of phosphorylated tau

Newborn babies and patients with Alzheimer's disease share an unexpected biological trait: elevated levels of a well-known biomarker for Alzheimer's.

24 Jun 2025

Health risks for newborns rise with increasing maternal age

Giving birth to a child after 40 is becoming more and more common – but it can entail an increased risk to the child.

23 Jun 2025

Europe faces uneven progress in biliary atresia screening efforts

20 Jun 2025

Newborns feel pain before fully understanding it

Brain networks responsible for sensing, understanding, and responding emotionally to pain develop at different rates in infants, with the conscious understanding of pain not fully developed until after birth, finds a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers.

19 Jun 2025

Global guideline released by WHO on managing sickle cell disease in pregnancy

The World Health Organization (WHO) today released its first-ever global guideline on the management of sickle cell disease (SCD) during pregnancy, addressing a critical and growing health challenge that can have life-threatening consequences for both women and babies.

19 Jun 2025

WHO releases new guidance to expand midwifery care worldwide

The World Health Organization (WHO) today released new guidance to help countries adopt and expand midwifery models of care - where midwives serve as the main care provider for women and babies throughout pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period.

18 Jun 2025

Healthy glial cell transplants slow Huntington’s disease progression

Huntington's disease has long defied attempts to rescue suffering neurons. A new study in Cell Reports shows that transplanting healthy human glial progenitor cells into the brains of adult animal models of the disease not only slowed motor and cognitive decline but also extended lifespan.

17 Jun 2025

New hereditary condition impairs DNA repair and raises blood cancer risk

A new hereditary condition has been discovered that affects patients' ability to repair DNA – leaving them both at greater risk of developing blood cancer, and unable to repair some of the damage caused by chemotherapy treatments.

16 Jun 2025

Exercise targets specific brain cells to protect against Alzheimer’s

Using advanced single-nuclei RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq) and a widely used preclinical model for Alzheimer's disease, researchers from Mass General Brigham and collaborators at SUNY Upstate Medical University have identified specific brain cell types that responded most to exercise.

12 Jun 2025

Antibiotic use predicts microbiota dysbiosis in preterm infants

Antibiotic use in preterm infants is linked to gut microbiome changes, increasing susceptibility to infections and impacting long-term health outcomes.

11 Jun 2025

Four ways Trump’s ‘one big beautiful bill’ would undermine access to Obamacare

Major changes could be in store for the more than 24 million people with health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, including how and when they can enroll, the paperwork required, and, crucially, the premiums they pay.

11 Jun 2025