President Trump urged pregnant girls 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 girls in September 2025 to keep away from Tylenol as a result of taking it might improve their infants’ danger of autism: “Taking Tylenol just isn’t good — I will say it: It isn’t good.”
Medical doctors 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, in line with a brand new examine 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 Faustan emergency doctor at Brigham and Ladies’s Hospital in Boston who led the examine. The president’s phrases “had a right away affect on how a lot Tylenol or acetaminophen was being ordered in emergency departments.”
It isn’t clear from the examine 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 1000’s of ladies 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 examine was restricted to emergency division visits and did not account for ladies contemplating Tylenol at residence. The info 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 massive an viewers because the president of the US, they will change prescriber and affected person conduct.”
Nonetheless, he says it is reassuring that the examine 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 buyers final month.
“We stand with science and proceed to consider that there isn’t any credible knowledge that reveals a confirmed hyperlink between taking acetaminophen and autism,” says Kenvue spokesperson Melissa Witt.
The examine in The Lancet examine additionally checked out prescriptions for leucovorin, a B vitamin, which rose sharply after the president steered it as an autism therapy. And people had not fallen again by the tip of the examine interval in early December.
There haven’t been giant scientific trials to check leucovorin’s efficacy in autism.
