Over decades The discussion on autism was a habitat of disinformation, incorrect interpretation and bad learning, from the long-term relationship between the neuro-development state and vaccines, to newer claims that deprivation of gluten and avoiding ultra-transformed foods can reverse autistic features.
On Monday evening, this spectrum appeared again in an oval office, when President Donald Trump announced a modern administration aspiration to examine the causes of autism with the claims that the ordinary painkillers Tynol, also known as acetaminofen, can cause this condition. Then the FDA announced that the drug would be hit by a warning label, citing the “possible association”.
David Amaral, a professor and research director at the UC Davis Mind Institute, was one of the people observing with consternation, when the president fired at Diatriba all over, warning pregnant women many times so that they would not take him, even for the treatment of fever.
“We heard that the president says that women should jump out,” says Amaral. “I was very surprised because we know that prolonged fever is in particular a risk factor of autism. So I’m worried that this admonition, in order not to take so much, will make the opposite of what they hope.”
Speculation surrounding Tythenol results from correlations taken by some studies that advertised the relationship between the utilize of painkillers and neurodevelopmental disorders. One this analysis It was published last month. The problem, says Renee Gardner, an epidemiologist at the Karolin Institute in Sweden, consists in the fact that these studies often come out of this conclusion, because they do not include enough, which statistics define as “misleading factors” – variables given to research that may affect the relationship between them.
In particular, Gardner points out that pregnant women who have to take Tynol are more likely to have pain, fever and prenatal infections, which themselves are risk factors for autism. More importantly, taking into account the heredity of autism, many genetic variants that raise the likelihood of impaired immunity and greater perception of pain, and thus the utilize of painkillers such as acetaminofen, is also associated with autism. The utilize of painkillers, says, is a red herring.
Last year, Gardner and other scientists published what is widely considered in the scientific field as The most decisive investigation So far on this subject, which took into account misleading factors. Using medical records from almost 2.5 million children in Sweden, they came to the opposite conclusion with the president: Tynenol is not related to autism. Another serious study Of the over 200,000 children in Japan, published at the beginning of this month, they also did not find a link.
Doctors are worried that Trump’s claims will have negative consequences. Michael Pszybudud, a pediatric neurodism consultant and a researcher from pediatric neurology at King’s College London, claims that he is afraid that pregnant women will start using other painkillers with a less proven safety profile.
Gardner is afraid that this will also lead to a cloud among his parents, a flashback to the 1950s and 1960s, at a time when autism was wrongly emotionally attributed to frosty “Mother of the fridge. “” This makes parents of children with neurodevelopmental conditions feel responsible, “he says.