Trump's claim Tylenol causes autism is false, study finds
The British Medical Journal found that the claims were based on studies with results they rated as "critically low" in confidence of their findings.
Tylenol, also known as paracetamol, is not linked to causing autism, contradicting President Donald Trump's claim the two were related, a new study has found. The British Medical Journal (BMJ) said that the studies used by Trump's administration were of "very low quality".
The BMJ came to the conclusion that "existing evidence does not clearly link maternal paracetamol use during pregnancy with autism or ADHD in offspring,” Mediaite reported. This comes as president said that doctors in the US would be notified that the use of "acetaminophen, which is commonly known as Tylenol in the US, during pregnancy can be associated with a very increased risk of autism" in September.
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On a review of the nine top studies that did find a correlation between the use of Tylenol while pregnany and neurodevelopment, including the one cited by Trump's officials when making the claim, the BMJ found critical flaws. Some of the issues include having no comprehensive search of scientific literature, not listing excluded studies or why they were excluded, inaccurate study designs, and the use of non-standard tools for bias risk assessments.
Dr. Shakila Thangaratinam, co-author of the review and executive dean of the Institute of Life Course and Medical Sciences at the University of Liverpool told ABC News the study was in part launched due to the "huge amount of media attention", brought on by Trump. She and her colleagues "wanted to look at all of the existing evidence in the space, look at the quality and make sense of it and interpret it, so that it would help health care providers in discussion with women and their families.”
Despite the criticism of the position, Trump and his Health and Human Services chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have doubled down on the issue. The president wrote “Pregnant Women, DON’T USE TYLENOL UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY” on a Truth Social post in October.
Another problem raised on the studies examined in the review was the failure to account for shared familial factors using a sibling control analysis. This would be to ensure genetic factors were not involved in results. Thangaratinam found that when this variable was accounted for, there was no association between Tylenol use during pregnancy and autism in babies.
The review went on to find that seven of the nine studies included actually warned against drawing a link between Tylenol and neurodeficiency. Many of the studies also used the same research for their analyses.
The studies were rated as "low" or "critically low" in confidence of their findings, meaning they cannot “be relied on to provide an accurate and comprehensive summary of the available studies.”
Kennedy admitted to insufficient evidence for his claims in October, telling reporters that “the causative association… between Tylenol given in pregnancy and the perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism."
"There should be a cautious approach to it,” he said.
