Overview
- The JAMA Internal Medicine paper published June 29, 2026 used sibling-matched analyses and found no association between prenatal acetaminophen and autism (adjusted HR 1.00) or ADHD (adjusted HR 1.01).
- Conventional cohort analyses in the same data showed modest positive risks, but those signals disappeared in both negative-control tests and sibling comparisons, which control for family factors and reasons women take the drug.
- Researchers examined electronic health records from 2001–2023 starting with 708,020 mother–child pairs and used sibling sets that included 124,333 children for autism and 97,285 for ADHD with median follow-ups near 10–11 years.
- The study’s main limitation is that public EHRs captured prescription or clinic-dispensed acetaminophen but likely missed over-the-counter and private-sector use, leaving a small residual uncertainty about unrecorded exposure.
- The findings reinforce similar sibling-design and Danish studies and suggest clinicians and public communicators should weigh this accumulating evidence when advising pregnant women about using acetaminophen for fever or pain.