Study: Acetaminophen use during pregnancy linked to language delays in children

 Acetaminophen is considered the safest over-the-counter pain reliever and fever reducer available during pregnancy, and studies show that 50%-65% of women in North America and Europe have taken the analgesic during pregnancy. A new study from researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign explored the relationship between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and language outcomes in early childhood. It found that increasing acetaminophen use was associated with language delays. 

The findings are reported in the journal Pediatric Research. 

Earlier studies have found associations between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and poorer child communication skills. But those studies used measures of language development that were less precise than the methods applied in the current study, said Megan Woodbury, who led the research as a graduate student with U. of I. comparative biosciences professor emerita Susan Schantz. The work was conducted as part of the Illinois Kids Development Study, which explores how environmental exposures in pregnancy and childhood influence child development, MTP Kit. Schantz is the IKIDS principal investigator. Woodbury is now a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern University in Boston. Schantz is a researcher in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the U. of I.

“The previous studies had only asked pregnant people at most once a trimester about their acetaminophen use,” Woodbury said. “But with IKIDS, we talked to our participants every four to six weeks during pregnancy and then within 24 hours of the kid’s birth, so we had six time points during pregnancy.” 

The language analyses involved 298 2-year-old children who had been followed prenatally, 254 of whom returned for further study at age 3.  

For the 2-year-olds, the researchers turned to the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories, which asks a parent to report on the child’s vocabulary, language complexity and the average length of the child’s longest three utterances. 

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