President Trump urged pregnant ladies to keep away from taking Tylenol in a White Home announcement in September 2025.

Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg by way of Getty Photographs

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Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg by way of Getty Photographs

President Trump advised pregnant ladies in September 2025 to keep away from Tylenol as a result of taking it will enhance their infants’ threat of autism: “Taking Tylenol is just not good — I will say it: It isn’t good.”

Docs and scientists rapidly mentioned the information did not assist the president’s declare, however emergency room orders for Tylenol, or acetaminophen, for pregnant sufferers went down 10% within the months that adopted, in line with a brand new research in The Lancet. There was no change within the acetaminophen orders for comparable ladies who weren’t pregnant.

“It occurred in a single day,” says Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency doctor at Brigham and Ladies’s Hospital in Boston who led the research. 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 research 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 girls 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 research was restricted to emergency division visits and did not account for ladies contemplating Tylenol at residence. The information got here from digital well being data from greater than 1,600 hospitals.

Dr. Caleb Alexander, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg College of Public Well being, says the response to Trump’s White Home announcement did not shock him.

“Phrases matter,” he says. “And once they come from somebody with as large an viewers because the president of america, they will change prescriber and affected person habits.”

Nonetheless, he says it is reassuring that the research discovered Tylenol use was returning to regular by December. He says it often takes greater than a single occasion to alter prescribing patterns long run.

Though the president and his well being workforce spoke within the fall about updating Tylenol’s label, that hasn’t occurred. Tylenol consumption “improved” in December, Kenvue, the corporate that makes Tylenol, advised traders final month.

“We stand with science and proceed to consider that there isn’t any credible information that exhibits a confirmed hyperlink between taking acetaminophen and autism,” says Kenvue spokesperson Melissa Witt.

The research in The Lancet research additionally checked out prescriptions for leucovorin, a B vitamin, which rose sharply after the president prompt it as an autism therapy. And people had not fallen again by the top of the research interval in early December.

There haven’t been massive scientific trials to check leucovorin’s efficacy in autism.