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Alt CDC (they/them)September 22, 2025 at 8:28 PM EDT

Let's talk #acetaminophen, #autism, & ague (or fever, if you’re modern) Tl;dr: causes of autism = complicated (Also, can we stop with "curing" autism autism.org.uk) Time to whack 🍊 & 🧠🪱's claims with some critical epi thinking 🧵👇

2/ First and foremost: scientific consensus right now is that there's no strong evidence of a link between acetaminophen 💊 & autism But good science does mean we critically think about results If most studies show no link, how do we explain studies that say 💊 during pregnancy & autism are linked❓ 3/ Acetaminophen 💊 is used to help with fevers and pain So if you're using 💊 it's probably not just for funsies - something hurts, or you have a fever Now what if fever... affected how baby develops during pregnancy? 🤔 Spoiler: it does! Fevers during pregnancy are linked to autism 4/ Now, whether fever + associated biological processes or the cause of the fever (like an infection) affects autism... that's not so clear But we can start to see how these two things, fevers & acetaminophen, might be really hard to separate And we haven't (and won't here) even touched genetics 🧬 5/ For more reading 📖 doi.org doi.org doi.org and listening 👂 podcasts.apple.com