A study, published in European Psychiatry, examined the effect of acetaminophen use during pregnancy on language development among infants.
Researchers used data from the Swedish Environmental Longitudinal, Mother and Child, Asthma and Allergy study. They gathered information from 754 women in the study who were in week eight through week 13 of their pregnancy. They asked the women to report the number of acetaminophen tablets they had taken between conception and enrollment in the study.
Among infants born to these women, researchers used a nurse's assessment and a follow-up questionnaire to determine frequency of language delay at 30 months, which was defined as the use of fewer than 50 words.
Fifty-nine percent of the women used acetaminophen in early pregnancy. The study shows that language delay was observed in 10 percent of all the children in the study, with girls showing more evidence of language delay than boys.
Additionally, girls whose mothers took acetaminophen more than six times in early pregnancy were nearly six times more likely to experience language delay as compared to girls whose mothers did not take acetaminophen.