Can taking paracetamol during pregnancy affect your kid's language skills? What a study says
PLAY NOWIt's not without a reason that doctors advise you against taking unprescribed drugs during pregnancy. A new research published in journal Pediatric Research shows a possible link between acetaminophen or paracetamol use during pregnancy and language delays in early childhood. While people usually trust acetaminophen or paracetamol to relieve headache or reduce fever even without consulting their doctor, but in expecting mothers, it may lead to undesired effects, as per this study. Acetaminophen is considered one of the safest over-the-counter pain reliever and fever reducer during pregnancy and studies show that 50-65% of women in North America and Europe take it during pregnancy. (Also read: Most expectant mothers miss out on vitamins important for their health and their baby’s, study finds)
However, a University of Illinois study that focused on consistently observing the usage of acetaminophen in pregnant women and conducting thorough assessments of language development in their children at the ages of 2 and 3 found that increased usage of acetaminophen, particularly in the third trimester, was linked to smaller vocabularies and shorter utterances in 2-year-olds.
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Each use of acetaminophen in the third trimester was linked to a two-word reduction in vocabulary in 2-year-olds, raising concerns about its impact on foetal brain development, said the study.
The researchers noted that the second and third trimesters are crucial for brain development particularly language development in foetus.
The language analyses included a group of 298 toddlers aged 2, who had been tracked since before birth. Subsequently, 254 of these participants returned for additional assessments at the age of 3.
“We wanted to collect data at that age because it’s the period called ‘word explosion,’ when kids are just adding words every day to their vocabulary,” said Susan Schantz, professor emerita of comparative biosciences and one of the authors of the study.
“We found that increased use of acetaminophen – especially during the third trimester – was associated with smaller vocabulary scores and shorter ‘mean length of utterance’ at two years,” Woodbury said.
The most significant finding was that each use of acetaminophen in the third trimester of pregnancy was associated with around two-word reduction in vocabulary in the 2-year-olds.
“This suggests that if a pregnant person took acetaminophen 13 times – or once per week – during the third trimester of that pregnancy, their child might express 26 fewer words at age 2 than other children that age,” Woodbury said.
