Tylenol use by pregnant women in ERs dropped after Trump autism warning : NPR

President Trump urged pregnant women to avoid taking Tylenol during a September 2025 White House announcement.

Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images

President Trump told pregnant women in September 2025 to avoid Tylenol because taking it would increase their baby’s risk of autism: “Taking Tylenol is not good – I’m going to say it: it’s not good.

Doctors and scientists quickly said the data did not support the president’s claims, but emergency room orders for Tylenol, or acetaminophen, for pregnant patients declined by 10% in the months that followed, according to a new study published in The Lancet. There was no change in acetaminophen prescriptions for comparable women who were not pregnant.

“It happened overnight,” says Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency room physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who led the study. The president’s words “had an immediate impact on the amount of Tylenol or acetaminophen ordered in emergency departments.”

The study does not know whether patients refused to take Tylenol or whether doctors prescribed it less. Faust says it’s probably a combination of the two.

“It’s about thousands of women who can’t control their pain or reduce their fever when they need it, when they want it, when they would benefit from it,” says Faust.

The study was limited to emergency room visits and did not consider women considering Tylenol at home. The data came from electronic health records from more than 1,600 hospitals.

Dr. Caleb Alexander, a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says the response to Trump’s announcement at the White House didn’t surprise him.

“Words matter,” he says. “And when they come from someone with as broad an audience as the president of the United States, they can change the behavior of prescribers and patients.”

Still, he says it’s reassuring that the study found Tylenol consumption returned to normal by December. He says it usually takes more than a single event to change long-term prescribing habits.

Although the president and his health team talked in the fall about updating Tylenol’s label, that has not happened. Tylenol consumption “improved” in December, Kenvue, the company that makes Tylenol, told investors last month.

“We support the science and continue to believe that there is no credible data demonstrating a proven link between taking acetaminophen and autism,” said Kenvue spokeswoman Melissa Witt.

The study in The Lancet The study also looked at prescriptions for leucovorin, a B vitamin, which rose sharply after the president suggested it as a treatment for autism. And these had not decreased at the end of the study period in early December.

There have been no large-scale clinical trials to test the effectiveness of leucovorin in autism.