Pregnant Women Taking Common Drug Linked to Childhood ADHD
By: News Staff
news@abc6.com
A new study is being conducted over the safety of a popular pain and fever reducer.
Acetaminophen, also known as Paracetamol, is the active ingredient in Tylenol and hundreds of over–the–counter and prescription medicines, says the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website.
The FDA says it has reviewed previous studies exploring prenatal use of acetaminophen and the risk of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children.
More than half of all pregnant women in the United States and Europe use acetaminophen.
Acetaminophen is also found in medicines for allergies, colds, flu and sleeplessness, according to the authors of the study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
But "potential limitations" in the design of these research studies prevent the FDA from "drawing reliable conclusions."
In order to learn more about acetaminophen and pregnancy, researchers used data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, an ongoing study from the University of Bristol in the UK charting the health of 14,500 families.
After analyzing the data, it was discovered that more than half the mothers (4,415 women or 53%) reported using acetaminophen at 18 weeks of pregnancy, while less than half (3,381 women or 42%) reported using it at 32 weeks.
Post–natally, a total of 6,916 mothers (89%) and 3,454 partners (84%) used acetaminophen.
Importantly, just 5% of children displayed any behavioral problems by age 7.
The researchers then looked at other possible prenatal factors which might contribute to attention issues in a child, including smoking, alcohol use, socioeconomics and genetics.
"It is important to note there are no studies demonstrating a causal link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and adverse effects on child development," said Marc Boston, a spokesman for McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the maker of Tylenol.
He added the researchers themselves stated that "further studies are required" to determine the cause of the link between behavior problems and prenatal exposure to acetaminophen.
© WLNE-TV / ABC6 2016
