Tylenol use by pregnant girls in ERs dropped after Trump autism warning : NPR

President Trump advised pregnant girls in September 2025 to keep away from Tylenol as a result of taking it will enhance their infants’ danger of autism: “Taking Tylenol isn’t good — I will say it: It isn’t good.”

Docs and scientists rapidly stated the knowledge did not assist the president’s declare, however emergency room orders for Tylenol, or acetaminophen, for pregnant sufferers went down 10% within the months that adopted, based on a brand new research in The Lancet. There was no change within the acetaminophen orders for comparable girls who weren’t pregnant.

“It occurred in a single day,” says Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency doctor at Brigham and Girls’s Hospital in Boston who led the research. The president’s phrases “had a direct influence on how a lot Tylenol or acetaminophen was being ordered in emergency departments.”

It isn’t clear from the research whether or not sufferers declined to take Tylenol or docs prescribed it much less. Faust says it is in all probability some mixture of the 2.

“That is hundreds of girls not getting ache management or not getting fever discount after they want it, when they need it, after they would profit from it,” Faust says.

The research was restricted to emergency division visits and did not account for girls contemplating Tylenol at residence. The information got here from digital well being data from greater than 1,600 hospitals.

Dr. Caleb Alexander, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Faculty of Public Well being, says the response to Trump’s White Home announcement did not shock him.

“Phrases matter,” he says. “And after they come from somebody with as huge an viewers because the president of the US, they’ll change prescriber and affected person conduct.”

Nonetheless, he says it is reassuring that the research discovered Tylenol use was returning to regular by December. He says it normally takes greater than a single occasion to alter prescribing patterns long run.

Though the president and his well being group spoke within the fall about updating Tylenol’s label, that hasn’t occurred. Tylenol consumption “improved” in December, Kenvue, the corporate that makes Tylenol, advised traders final month.

“We stand with science and proceed to imagine that there isn’t any credible knowledge that exhibits a confirmed hyperlink between taking acetaminophen and autism,” says Kenvue spokesperson Melissa Witt.

The research in The Lancet research additionally checked out prescriptions for leucovorin, a B vitamin, which rose sharply after the president urged it as an autism remedy. And people had not fallen again by the tip of the research interval in early December.

There haven’t been giant scientific trials to check leucovorin’s efficacy in autism.