Female Health and Egg Quality

The summary for the Female Health and Egg Quality grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the National Institutes of Health, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

Female Health and Egg Quality: The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) invites applications from investigators willing to participate in a multisite National Cooperative Program on Female Health and Egg Quality. This Program will utilize the cooperative agreement mechanism to try to better understand the impact of poor nutrition, extreme exercise, smoking, certain assisted reproductive technologies and other adverse health situations upon reproductive processes prior to and around the time of fertilization in females. The central focus of this Program will be to establish measurable or identifiable characteristics of high quality human and nonhuman eggs that have full developmental potential. It is thought that a high quality egg is an important starting point for the development of a healthy embryo, placenta and fetus. It is also thought that low egg quality can lead to certain forms of infertility, to abnormal embryonic and fetal development, to low birthweight as well as to longterm adult diseases and disorders in the offspring. The Barker Hypothesis on fetal origins of adult diseases suggests that there can be adverse in utero effects on the fetus that can lead to certain adult diseases such as heart attacks, diabetes and chronic high blood pressure. This present initiative is based upon the concept that the Barker Hypothesis may also pertain to adverse effects on the developing egg before and around the time of fertilization. Among the ultimate beneficiaries of this Program will be women who have difficulty attaining healthy pregnancies and producing healthy offspring owing to low egg quality.