• Posted March 10, 2026

Trump Caused Immediate Decrease in Acetaminophen Rx's For Pregnant Women, Study Finds

The U.S. president’s words are powerful enough to have an immediate impact on medicine, a new study has found.

At a September 2025 White House briefing, President Donald Trump claimed that acetaminophen (Tylenol) could cause autism.

“Don’t take Tylenol. Don’t take it. Fight like hell not to take it,” Trump said, urging pregnant women to avoid the drug.

His comments were not supported by medical data. Studies have continued to show no conclusive link between acetaminophen and autism.

Nevertheless, acetaminophen prescriptions for pregnant women being treated in ERs fell significantly following the briefing, researchers reported March 5 in The Lancet.

Prescriptions for acetaminophen fell by about 10% following Trump’s remarks, even though they remained consistent for women who weren’t pregnant during the same period, researchers found.

“It’s not just patients who were influenced by the unconventional press conference,” said senior researcher Dr. Michael Barnett, a professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. 

“Their doctors were either influenced themselves or pushed by patients to adopt a new practice,” he added in a news release.

The American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG) continues to support the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy.

“More than two decades of research has shown that acetaminophen is safe to use during pregnancy in consultation with your physician,” ACOG says on its website. “Despite the evidence, misinformation about acetaminophen use in pregnancy — including claims incorrectly tying acetaminophen to autism and neurodevelopmental disorders in children — is growing.”

The researchers also found that prescriptions for leucovorin, a drug touted as a potential autism treatment during the same briefing, were also affected.

The drug is not included in standard autism treatment guidelines, and has had mixed preliminary results in small clinical trials for autism.

Nevertheless, outpatient prescriptions for leucovorin were up 93% in the month following the White House remarks. About 72% of the prescriptions were for kids with autism, who account for only 4% of the patients looked at in the study.

“The White House briefing was an extremely unusual mechanism to communicate medical information and bypassed many standard checks on ensuring accurate messaging,” Barnett said. “The results show just how much political leaders can steer health behavior even when there has been no change in the evidence for these therapies.”

For the new study, researchers analyzed data from a large electronic health record database that includes more than 1,600 hospitals and 37,000 clinics across the United States. The team analyzed weekly prescribing trends before and after the briefing.

“The results were astounding to me,” said lead researcher Dr. Jeremy Samuel Faust, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

“It can take years, even decades, for high-quality research to finally reach clinicians. Here, by using the White House, it was done overnight,” Faust said in a news release. “Unfortunately, they're claiming breakthroughs that simply haven't occurred.”

More information

The American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists has more on acetaminophen and pregnancy.

SOURCES: Brown University, news release, March 5, 2026; The Lancet, March 5, 2026