Trump had previously tasked officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, with investigating rising autism rates. There has been an uptick in autism diagnoses across the world over the past decade, including in Australia.
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In April, Kennedy said: “By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”
Evidence is not conclusive: Australian scientists
But Australian researchers emphasised there were no scientific studies that had proven a causal relationship between paracetamol in pregnancy and autism, only that there might be a link. They said any decisions must also be weighed against the risk of untreated fever in pregnancy.
“Evidence is mixed,” said Associate Professor Kevin Yap, from La Trobe University.
“A recent review in the US has reported associations between prenatal paracetamol use and slightly higher rates of autism, but a large Swedish study using sibling comparisons had found no effect when family factors were controlled… The results of this study have to be taken with caution.”
Dr Hannah Kirk, a senior lecturer in the Turner institute for Brain and Mental Health at Monash University, said the reports had “understandably raised concern among expectant parents”.
“However, no study has shown that [paracetamol] causes autism. Some studies have reported an association between [paracetamol] use and autism, while others have not. Importantly, association does not mean causation,” she said.
Professor Andrew Whitehouse, who leads autism research at The Kids Research Institute Australia, agreed. “Autism is a complex condition influenced by many genetic and environmental factors,” he said.
“Any small associations in this area need to be weighed against the risk of untreated high fever in pregnancy for the woman and the developing baby.”
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Dr Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, a senior research fellow from the University of Wollongong, said there had only been a handful of large scientific studies into the effect of paracetamol in pregnancy.
“None of them are sufficient for us to make any firm conclusions about the risk that paracetamol may or may not have. The largest study, from Sweden, in my opinion quite strongly demonstrates the risk is not that much of a concern,” he said.
“This [latest] furore is based on a specific study, a systematic review, where the authors argued overall that the data was consistent with paracetamol being associated with autism… Certainly, there’s no strong evidence that in utero exposure to [paracetamol] causes autism.”
The Swedish study, published in 2024, analysed the records of 2.48 million births from 1995 through 2019. The researchers, who compared siblings to control for genetic and environmental factors, found no increased risk of autism when their mothers took paracetamol while pregnant.
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