U.S. president Donald Trump said in a recent news conference ”women should avoid Tylenol during pregnancy.” He told Americans to “fight like hell not to take it.”
Trump said acetaminophen, the generic name for Tylenol, ”can be associated with a very increased risk of autism,” and called the drug ”not good”.
Dr. Janine Hutson, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at London Health Sciences Centre, said a recent study of more than two million pregnancies “prospectively looked at acetaminophen exposure, and when they adjusted for siblings there was no association with autism.”
“That’s a pretty high-quality pregnancy study,” she said. “So really the data overall I don’t think shows a good causation.”
Pictured: Dr. Janine Hutson Credit: LHSC
Hutson said acetaminophen remains the safest option available.
“We can’t use NSAIDs in pregnancy, especially after about twenty weeks,” Hutson said. “So really acetaminophen is the only option left. If it’s medically needed and used at the lowest dose for a short period, that would still be the safest option.”
Through LHSCRI, Hutson and her team are using a placenta perfusion model to help researchers better understand drug safety in pregnancy by showing how medications cross the placenta and reach fetal tissues.
“We take the placenta after cesarean section and we bring it to our lab, and we basically set up a maternal circulation with the pump and tubing and then a fetal circulation,” she said. “We put the medication on one side and then look how it transfers over to the other side.”
Credit: The Today Show
For women worried about Tylenol, Hutson said the first step is to seek medical advice.
“Definitely talk to your healthcare provider,” she said. “If it’s chronic pain or neuropathic pain, there might be a better option for long-term use. But if you have fever in pregnancy and you need Tylenol or acetaminophen for the day, fever can lead to problems in the pregnancy, like miscarriage or neural tube defects. The very minimal association of anything with autism for a dose or two would definitely be more beneficial in that situation.”
She added: “It shouldn’t be a yes or no answer. It needs to be a discussion.”
