At a press conference, Trump claimed that paracetamol is behind the significant increase in children with autism diagnoses in the US, and that the reason is that pregnant women take Tylenol, the most common brand of paracetamol in the US.
Taking it is not good, ok, it's not good. That's why women are recommended to take Tylenol during pregnancy only if it's absolutely medically necessary, he said at the White House.
But a direct link between the medicine and autism has not been proven, which several media companies and news agencies comment on.
Experts and researchers note that the increase is instead mainly due to new definitions of autism and that even milder diagnoses are now included, as well as the fact that diagnoses are also made in a better way.
Swedish study
Among other things, NBC News intervened in its broadcast of the press conference and fact-checked all the figures and warned that they did not match and that paracetamol, on the contrary, is one of the safer medicines for expectant mothers to take.
Sky News states in its report from Trump's speech that several studies show that there are no connections, and cites in particular a study from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and Drexel University in the US.
In that study from 2024, it is stated that taking pain-relieving medication with paracetamol during pregnancy does not increase the risk of the child developing autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability.
The researchers used data from various registers of 2.4 million children born in Sweden between 1995 and 2019. The children were followed for up to 26 years and the researchers saw no difference in the incidence of diagnoses between siblings where the mother took or did not take paracetamol.
Want to give B-vitamin
After the press conference, the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that they have approved a medicine for the treatment of autism. This medicine, leucovorin, is, according to the news agency AFP, a concentrate of B-vitamin.
Trump later went on in his speech and said that hepatitis B vaccines should not be given to infants. This also has no scientific basis.
Trump was accompanied on stage by the criticized Health Minister Robert F Kennedy. The expertise in the US has previously repeatedly criticized and warned against vaccine skeptic Kennedy.
