It’s also worth noting that acetaminophen is pretty much the ONLY OTC painkiller you’re allowed to take while pregnant (other than baby aspirin as a preventative if you’re high risk for pre-eclampsia), so I strongly suspect a sizeable majority of people end up using it at least once during pregnancy. It’s common enough that I’d imagine separating correlation from causation on that one might be especially difficult.
In all likelihood the root cause of ASD is multifactoral and appears to be at least partially genetic.
The conclusion from meta analysis reviews of ASD research on environmental causes is that none of it is conclusive, and most of it is poor quality. This is a chronic problem with epidemiology.
I read a thing the other day that acetaminophen during pregnancy is now suspected as a cause.
It inhibits cell division and is now considered harmful to pregnancy and conception.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40819833/
But there’s also a recent finding suggesting it doesn’t
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38592388/
I hadn’t seen that second result before writing this comment
It’s also worth noting that acetaminophen is pretty much the ONLY OTC painkiller you’re allowed to take while pregnant (other than baby aspirin as a preventative if you’re high risk for pre-eclampsia), so I strongly suspect a sizeable majority of people end up using it at least once during pregnancy. It’s common enough that I’d imagine separating correlation from causation on that one might be especially difficult.
In all likelihood the root cause of ASD is multifactoral and appears to be at least partially genetic.
It’s also used to treat things that have also shown potential links to ASD, like certain viral infections.
The conclusion from meta analysis reviews of ASD research on environmental causes is that none of it is conclusive, and most of it is poor quality. This is a chronic problem with epidemiology.