A sweeping Danish study published this week found no connection between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism diagnoses in children, directly contradicting high-profile claims made by the Trump administration about the common pain reliever.
Researchers tracked more than 1.5 million children born between 1997 and 2022 through Denmark's national health registry. Among the 31,098 children exposed to Tylenol in the womb, autism was diagnosed in 1.8 percent. For children not exposed, the rate was 3 percent. The study appeared in JAMA Pediatrics.
Trump has repeatedly warned pregnant women against taking the medication, claiming at a September press conference that Tylenol carried "a very increased risk of autism." He stated flatly: "If you're pregnant, don't take Tylenol. Don't have your baby take Tylenol." The only exception he carved out was for cases of extremely high fever that patients felt they could not endure.
The warnings appear to have had real consequences. A separate study published last month in the Lancet found that Tylenol orders for pregnant women in emergency rooms dropped 16 percent in the months following the September announcement. The decline reached as steep as 20 percent three weeks after officials spoke, then gradually recovered to around 10 percent as news coverage faded and respiratory virus season intensified.
"Health officials' words are affecting behavior," said Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Mass General Brigham and co-author of the Lancet research. Notably, orders for Tylenol among non-pregnant women of the same age showed no decline, nor did prescriptions for other medications like intravenous fluids or opioids.
The medical case for acetaminophen in pregnancy is straightforward. It remains one of the few medications considered safe for pregnant patients to take. Doctors rely on it to manage pain and reduce fever because alternatives carry their own risks. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen, Aleve, and Motrin are typically avoided during pregnancy due to bleeding concerns and potential complications with the placenta.
"It's the safest option for pain control and fever reduction," Faust said. Pain itself poses clinical risks to pregnant patients, making effective treatment important.
The Danish findings align with recent research from Sweden. A 2024 Swedish study initially detected a marginal link between prenatal acetaminophen exposure and autism, but the association vanished when researchers accounted for family genetics. The result reinforced what scientists already know: autism has a strong genetic component. A 2025 US review of existing studies acknowledged a potential relationship but noted that confounding factors could explain the findings, such as autistic pregnant people experiencing higher pain levels and therefore using Tylenol more frequently than neurotypical pregnant women.
The FDA announced in September 2025 that it would add a label warning about a potential autism link, a decision that preceded the new Danish data. Separately, at the same September press conference where Trump criticized Tylenol, officials promoted leucovorin, a B vitamin, as a potential autism treatment. That claim was quietly retracted earlier this year.
Author James Rodriguez: "The Danish study is thorough and definitive, but the damage to public trust may already be done. When officials broadcast unproven risks about one of pregnancy's safest medications, pregnant women suffer, and so do babies with untreated fevers and pain."
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