By Sriparna Roy
March 6 (Reuters) – Tylenol use among pregnant women fell after U.S. President Donald Trump linked autism to the over-the-counter pain relief medicine, according to an analysis of U.S. emergency room prescribing patterns published in the UK medical journal Lancet.
In September, Trump said pregnant women should avoid using Tylenol, the brand name for the product known as acetaminophen or paracetamol owned by Kenvue. Health officials cited research claiming prenatal Tylenol use is linked with neurodevelopmental disorders to back up his statement.
Kenvue called the claims of a link to autism unfounded, and said in a statement that acetaminophen is the safest option for pain and fever relief for pregnant women at any point of their pregnancy.
The decrease in Tylenol prescribing appeared to wane after several weeks, possibly in response to messaging from trusted organizations refuting the President’s claims, the researchers said.
The study led by Dr. Jeremy Faust, a Harvard professor, also found a persistent increase in the use of leucovorin, a form of folinic acid that Trump also touted as a treatment for children with autism during the same press conference.
Drug regulators said they would approve the drug based on a U.S. Food and Drug Administration review of patient data.
THOUSANDS OF WOMEN WENT WITHOUT TYLENOL
The study compared the number of Tylenol prescriptions given to pregnant patients in emergency departments in the three months before and after Trump’s announcement on September 22.
Overall, Tylenol prescriptions fell 10%. Orders of Tylenol for pregnant women aged 15–44 years dipped 16% at the start of the three-month study, and the biggest weekly decline of 20% happened in the third week.
“This means that thousands of women did not have their pain or fever treated in ERs, likely because they were needlessly afraid,” said study author Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
“We think that’s unfortunate because, among the options for pain control and fever reduction, Tylenol is the safest option,” said Faust.
There was no statistically significant change in orders among women who were not pregnant, his analysis found.
For the three months after the President’s warning, the researchers had electronic health record data on nearly 90,000 emergency department visits by pregnant females, about 853,000 emergency visits by non-pregnant females, and 8.6 million outpatient clinical encounters among children.
The study found that outpatient leucovorin prescriptions for children aged 5–17 years also rose by 71% during this time period. There was a 93% increase at the start of the study, and the biggest jump happened in the second week, when the prescription rate more than doubled.
While prescriptions fell from the peak, they were still sharply higher at the end of the study period.
“In a time in which public trust in health, medicine, and science is under attack, it’s regrettable that so many families will have been misled into thinking that this medication could somehow miraculously change the lives of children with autism,” Faust added.
When asked about the study on Friday, Andrew Nixon, spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, responded by sending his post on X in which he defended the government’s message on Tylenol, saying it was part of its “commitment to telling the truth about public health.”
(Reporting by Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru and Nancy Lapid; additional reporting by Kamal Choudhury; editing by Caroline Humer and Alan Barona)
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