The Claim:
Acetaminophen, sold as Tylenol and many generic formulations, is widely considered safe to take during pregnancy. But a new study reports that children of women who do so have a higher risk of behavioral problems when they're about 7 than do children whose pregnant mothers never took the pain drug.
Tell me more:
This is a pretty straightforward observational study, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics. Researchers mined data collected by the long-running ALSPAC study in England, which in 1991 began recruiting pregnant women and has gathered years of data (via clinic visits and questionnaires) on their children's heath. There were 7,796 mother-child pairs in this study.
