President Trump urged pregnant ladies to keep away from taking Tylenol in a White Home announcement in September 2025.
Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg by way of Getty Pictures
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Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg by way of Getty Pictures
President Trump instructed pregnant ladies in September 2025 to keep away from Tylenol as a result of taking it will enhance their infants’ danger of autism: “Taking Tylenol is just not good — I will say it: It isn’t good.”
Docs and scientists rapidly stated the knowledge did not assist the president’s declarehowever 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 ladies who weren’t pregnant.
“It occurred in a single day,” says Dr. Jeremy Faustan emergency doctor at Brigham and Ladies’s Hospital in Boston who led the research. The president’s phrases “had an instantaneous impression 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 most likely some mixture of the 2.
“That is hundreds of girls not getting ache management or not getting fever discount once they want it, when they need it, once 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 information from greater than 1,600 hospitals.
Dr. Caleb Alexander, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Faculty of Public Well beingsays the response to Trump’s White Home announcement did not shock him.
“Phrases matter,” he says. “And once they come from somebody with as huge an viewers because the president of america, they’ll change prescriber and affected person habits.”
Nonetheless, he says it is reassuring that the research discovered Tylenol use was returning to regular by December. He says it often takes greater than a single occasion to vary prescribing patterns long run.
Though the president and his well being staff spoke within the fall about updating Tylenol’s label, that hasn’t occurred. Tylenol consumption “improved” in December, Kenvue, the corporate that makes Tylenol, instructed traders final month.
“We stand with science and proceed to consider that there is no such thing as a credible knowledge that reveals 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 recommended it as an autism therapy. And people had not fallen again by the top of the research interval in early December.
There haven’t been giant scientific trials to check leucovorin’s efficacy in autism.
