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JN Learning, an educational platform of the American Medical Association, has weighed in on the controversy surrounding the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and this risk of childhood autism.
The original content was published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, but neither the researchers nor the research has an affiliation with the AMA. The report, originally published in 2024 by JAMA, was recently released by JN Learning.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suggested a link between use of the common over-the-counter pain medication by pregnant women and autism in children.
HHS is expected to release a report this month.
Acetaminophen is the active ingredient in Tylenol and other pain medications.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The study looked at whether acetaminophen use during pregnancy increases children’s risk of neurodevelopmental disorders.
The study, which used sibling controls of matched full sibling pairs, found no evidence of increased risk of autism or intellectual disability associated with acetaminophen use.
Other population-based studies without sibling controls identified marginally increased risks of autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) associated with acetaminophen use during pregnancy, the report said.
The study concluded that acetaminophen use during pregnancy was not associated with children’s risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disability in sibling control analyses.
This suggests that associations observed in other models may have been attributable to a confounding, or a third, variable.
THE LARGER TREND
The sibling control analysis study looked at 185,909 children who were exposed to acetaminophen during pregnancy.
This represented 7.49% of the cohort study of 2,480,797 children born in 1995 to 2019 in Sweden, with follow-up through Dec. 31, 2021.
Crude absolute risks at 10 years of age for those not exposed versus those exposed to acetaminophen were 1.33% versus 1.53% for autism, 2.46% versus 2.87% for ADHD, and 0.70% versus 0.82% for intellectual disability.
In models without sibling control, use versus no use of acetaminophen during pregnancy was associated with marginally increased risk of autism.
Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly identified the source of the study. HFN regrets the error.
Email the writer: SMorse@himss.org