Using acetaminophen medication like Tylenol during pregnancy does not cause autism despite “dangerous disinformation” that the White House is spreading on the topic, says Dr. Anita Henderson, a pediatrician at the Hattiesburg Clinic in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
She is urging expecting mothers to obtain medical advice from doctors, not politicians, after a Sept. 22 White House news conference where President Donald Trump, alongside U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, repeatedly warned pregnant women not to take Tylenol. The men claimed with no evidence that acetaminophen increases the risk of autism in children.
“We do know that women who have a severe infection during pregnancy, like sepsis, like pneumonia, like influenza, may be at increased risk for autism,” she told the Mississippi Free Press on Sept. 24. “So, those women who do have high fevers and do have medical illnesses that need a fever reducer may take Tylenol, but that doesn’t mean that Tylenol caused autism. The infection, the premature birth, the sepsis—all those things in the mother may have increased their risk of having a baby with autism.”
A 2017 study led by scientists at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health found that prenatal exposure to maternal fever during the second trimester increased the likelihood of autism for children by 40%.
Trump and Kennedy also fueled debunked claims that ingredients in vaccines or timing shots close together could contribute to rising rates of autism. Trump’s comments left some pregnant women angry and others with questions.
‘You Do Not Need to Tough It Out’
Dr. Anita Henderson said that President Trump and Health Secretary Kennedy did not reveal any new data or facts during the Monday press conference that link acetaminophen usage in pregnancy to autism in children.
The pediatrician said the men’s rhetoric amounts to men blaming women for their children’s autism.
About 80% of people with autism inherited it from relatives, she said. Unlike Trump and Kennedy’s claims, her statistic that is backed up by medical research.
“We are blaming women,” Henderson told the Mississippi Free Press. “Donald Trump’s language was very specific when he said multiple times, ‘Don’t take Tylenol.’ He said multiple times, ‘Women just need to tough it out.’ And there is a danger in that. As I said, if you have a fever, you do not need to tough it out. You need to go to your OBGYN, find out if there’s a reason for you to have a fever, and treat that fever with an appropriate dose of acetaminophen.”
Dr. R. Todd Ivey, an OB-GYN in Houston, Texas, told the Associated Press that he’s already heard from a few patients and expects to get a lot more questions in the coming weeks.
“People are concerned,” he told the Associated Press. “But what I’m doing is reassuring patients that there is no causation that has ever been proven.”
Moms Have Mixed Reactions to Trump’s Announcement
Faith Ayer had no qualms about taking Tylenol for chronic migraines and COVID-19 during her pregnancy, and grew disappointed and angry as she watched President Donald Trump rail against the pain medicine.
“A lot of the claims that were shared have just not been backed by evidence,” said Ayer, a nurse practitioner in Jacksonville, Florida, who is about 17 weeks pregnant with her first child. She said Trump’s words have implications “for patients across the country and even across the world.”
As a nurse, Ayer, 30, knew she didn’t have a lot of options for treating her migraines and a fever she spiked during a bout of COVID-19.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has long considered Tylenol, also known by the generic name acetaminophen, one of the only safe pain relievers during pregnancy. Five years ago, the Food and Drug Administration warned that the use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin or ibuprofen might cause rare but serious kidney problems in a fetus.
“Weighing benefits and risks, I had no reservations when taking Tylenol,” Ayer told the Associated Press, especially since she knew that untreated fevers in pregnancy, particularly in the first trimester, increase the risk for miscarriages, preterm birth and other problems.
Despite her medical knowledge, she had a conversation with her doctor about taking Tylenol “and kind of got the all clear on their end, too.”
When she gives birth, she plans to give her baby all the vaccines that medical experts recommend.
But other pregnant women are not so sure about things.
Dr. Stella Dantas, an OB-GYN in Portland, Oregon, said she was starting to get questions through her patient email system.
“I anticipate we’re going to have a lot of anxiety about using acetaminophen, which we counsel them (that it) is OK to use if they have a headache, if they have a fever,” she said. “There are a number of reasons patients will need to take it, and patients already feel anxious about taking any medication in pregnancy.”
Doctors Reassure Patients That Tylenol and Vaccines Are Safe
Dr. Clayton Alfonso, an OB-GYN at Duke University in North Carolina, is drafting up standard responses for the nursing team to give out to Tylenol inquiries.
The main message: Tylenol has been around for decades, is safe, and has not been shown to cause autism.
Acetaminophen use during pregnancy hasn’t increased in recent decades like autism rates have, according to the Coalition of Autism Scientists.
Some studies have raised the possibility that taking acetaminophen in pregnancy might be associated with a risk of autism, but many others haven’t found a connection. One challenge is that it’s hard to disentangle the effects of Tylenol use from the effects of high fevers during pregnancy.
Science has shown that autism is mostly rooted in genetics. Experts say different combinations of genes and other factors—such as the age of the child’s father and whether the mother had health problems during the pregnancy—can all affect how a fetal brain develops.
Besides letting patients know “there has been no causal link established or proven” between Tylenol use in pregnancy and autism, Dr. Stella Dantas said she’s also advising patients against “toughing it out” if they have fever or pain.
“A healthy pregnancy starts with a healthy mom,” Dantas said. “So I would ask patients if they are concerned to consult their physicians. And trust in the medical advice given to them.”
Doctors said much the same about advising patients to get their newborns vaccinated. Ivey said doctors are seeing more people decline vaccinations lately, which “speaks to the distrust for the medical community in general.”
“We know that these vaccines save lives,” and don’t cause autism, he said.
Doctors also said they don’t want women to doubt what they did during pregnancy if their child does develop autism.
“We need to take a deep breath,” Ivey said. “We need to trust the people that are doing the work—the scientists, the physicians, the other health care providers.”
Dr. Anita Henderson, the Hattiesburg pediatrician, said that autism rates may appear to look higher now, but the medical community has also increased the testing, diagnosing and treating of autism.
“We do know that rates of autism seem to have gone up, but we are also better at detecting and diagnosing it,” she told the Mississippi Free Press. “I started practicing pediatrics 30 years ago. I had patients with autism 30 years ago. But 30 years ago, we were not screening every 18-month-old and 24-month-old for autism like we are now.”
The pediatrician said that in Mississippi, which has the nation’s highest rates of infant and maternal mortality, it is especially important for women of childbearing age to take care of their health, both mental and physical.
“In Mississippi, we’re working on these things,” Henderson told the Mississippi Free Press on Sept. 24. “We are working on trying to lower our preterm birth rate. We want women to have quality prenatal care. We want them to have quality preconception care. Because we know that having a healthy mom before they even become pregnant, they’re more likely to deliver a healthy baby.”
Mississippi Free Press reporter Heather Harrison contributed the interview with Dr. Anita Henderson to this story. The Associated Press produced the rest of the story.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
