WHO joins global health leaders rejecting US acetaminophen warnings

The World Health Organization has joined the international pushback against the Trump administration’s warnings that acetaminophen use during pregnancy leads to autism, saying Wednesday there is “no conclusive scientific evidence confirming a possible link.”

Public health leaders and organizations around the world have been sounding off since President Donald Trump called Monday to limit use of acetaminophen — the active ingredient in Tylenol and more than 600 other medications — during early pregnancy except in cases of high fever, aligning himself with “Make America Healthy Again” activists and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his health secretary, who have long called for more investigation into the causes of autism.

The move is a sharp departure from the accepted guidance on a medication that many major medical associations have deemed safe, and it was met with swift criticism domestically and internationally from doctors and autism advocates. The WHO added Wednesday that the exact cause of autism has not been established and that “it is understood there are multiple factors that can be involved.”

“Extensive research has been undertaken over the past decade, including large-scale studies, looking into links between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism,” the organization said in a statement. “At this time, no consistent association has been established.”

On Tuesday, Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency released a statement confirming that taking acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol, during pregnancy “remains safe and there is no evidence it causes autism in children.”

Alison Cave, chief safety officer at the MHRA, advised expectant mothers to continue following existing guidance from the National Health Service and to consult their doctors if they have any questions about medication during pregnancy. “Untreated pain and fever can pose risks to the unborn baby, so it is important to manage these symptoms with the recommended treatment,” she wrote.

Wes Streeting, Britain’s health secretary, had harsher words for Trump’s new health advice, telling the broadcaster ITV that Britons should not “pay any attention whatsoever to what Trump says about medicine.”

He added: “I trust doctors over President Trump, frankly, on this. I’ve just got to be really clear about this: There is no evidence to link the use of paracetamol by pregnant women to autism in their children. None.”

Trump made the announcement after a study funded by the National Institutes of Health was published last month that reviewed 46 epidemiological studies and found that 27 reported links between use of the medication during pregnancy and an increased risk of autism or ADHD in their children, while nine showed no link and four indicated protective effects.

But the findings do not provide a causal link, according to researcher Diddier Prada of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, who led the study. “We show that acetaminophen is associated with a higher risk, but not causing it. Those are very different things,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post this month.

Other global health organizations criticizing Trump’s guidance include Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration and the European Medicines Agency, which said in a statement Tuesday that there is no new evidence that would require changes to its guidance on using the pain reliever during pregnancy.

“Paracetamol remains an important option to treat pain or fever in pregnant women,” EMA Chief Medical Officer Steffen Thirstrup said. “Our advice is based on a rigorous assessment of the available scientific data and we have found no evidence that taking paracetamol during pregnancy causes autism in children.”

Nearly 62 million people have autism spectrum disorder, according to the WHO, which added that the global community needs to “do more to understand the causes of autism and how best to care for and support the needs of autistic people and their families.”

The agency said it is committed to advancing that goal, but it also weighed in on debunked claims from Kennedy and others that autism is linked to vaccines, saying “a robust, extensive evidence base exists showing childhood vaccines do not cause autism.”