According to a recent study, acetaminophen usage during pregnancy is not associated with a higher risk of autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or intellectual disability in the offspring.

The data of almost 2.4 million infants born in Sweden between 1995 and 2019 with a follow-up through December 2021 was examined in a recent study that was published in the JAMA Network on Tuesday. After coming to the final conclusion that there was no connection between acetaminophen and developmental abnormalities, the researchers hypothesized that there might be other explanations for the disorders.

The researchers found that at age 10, the crude absolute risks for autism, ADHD, and intellectual disability were 1.33 percent versus 1.53 percent, 2.46 percent versus 2.87 percent, and 0.70 percent versus 0.82 percent for those who were not exposed to acetaminophen.

The researchers looked at sibling pairs in a follow-up study after their original analysis revealed a little elevated risk of autism, ADHD, and intellectual disability in children whose mothers took acetaminophen during pregnancy.

The sibling control research, which included moms who used acetaminophen during one pregnancy but not the second, discovered no connection between acetaminophen and developmental abnormalities.

The research concluded that there was just a “noncausal association” between the illnesses and acetaminophen.

According to the study, “Results suggested that there was not one single ‘smoking gun’ confounder, but rather that multiple birthing parents’ health and sociodemographic characteristics each explained at least part of the apparent association,”