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Examining the relationship of acetaminophen use during pregnancy with early language development in children

Megan L Woodbury1,2,3, Patricia Cintora4, Shukhan Ng4

  • 1Neuroscience Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA. m.woodbury@northeastern.edu.

Pediatric Research
|December 11, 2023
PubMed

Insights

Acetaminophen use during pregnancy, especially in the second and third trimesters, may be linked to poorer early language development in children. This association was more pronounced in male infants, highlighting potential neurodevelopmental concerns.

Area of Science:

  • Neurodevelopmental research
  • Pediatric language development
  • Prenatal exposure studies

Background:

  • Acetaminophen is the sole analgesic deemed safe for pregnancy.
  • Emerging evidence suggests prenatal acetaminophen exposure may correlate with adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes.
  • Limited research has specifically investigated its impact on child language development.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the association between prenatal acetaminophen use and early language development.
  • To examine language outcomes at two distinct developmental stages (26.5-28.5 and 36-38 months).
  • To explore potential sex-based differences in this association.

Main Methods:

  • Prospective birth cohort study (Illinois Kids Development Study).
  • Enrolled 532 newborns with available exposure data.
  • Collected acetaminophen exposure data across pregnancy and language data via MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) and Speech and Language Assessment Scale (SLAS).

Main Results:

  • Increased acetaminophen use in the second or third trimester correlated with smaller vocabularies and shorter utterance length at 26.5-28.5 months.
  • Third-trimester use was linked to higher odds of below-average utterance length in male infants.
  • Prenatal acetaminophen exposure was associated with lower scores on language assessments at 36-38 months, particularly in males.

Conclusions:

  • Higher prenatal acetaminophen exposure, particularly in later pregnancy, may be associated with impaired early language development.
  • The observed effects were more significant in male children.
  • This study underscores the need for further evaluation of acetaminophen's impact on fetal neurodevelopment.
Abstract

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