Reduction in Acetaminophen Orders in ED After White House Briefing

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By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on March 17, 2026.

via HealthDay

TUESDAY, March 17, 2026 -- A Sept. 22, 2025, White House briefing making claims regarding acetaminophen and leucovorin and their relationship with autism spectrum disorder resulted in a reduction in acetaminophen orders for pregnant women in emergency departments and an increase in leucovorin prescribing among children, according to a research letter published in the March 14 issue of The Lancet.

Jeremy Samuel Faust, M.D., from Harvard Medical School in Boston, and Michael L. Barnett, M.D., from the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island, examined changes in use of acetaminophen and leucovorin after the White House briefing. An interrupted time-series analysis was performed and the overall observed-to-expected ratio (OER) for prescriptions during the study period (Sept. 22 to Dec. 7, 2025) was examined.

The analyses included 88,857 and 853,216 emergency department visits among pregnant female patients aged 15 to 44 years and among nonpregnant female patients, respectively, during the study period, and 8,627,205 outpatient clinical encounters among children aged 5 to 17 years. The researchers found that acetaminophen encounters decreased among pregnant emergency department patients (OER, 0.90), corresponding to an absolute rate change of 22.5 orders per 1,000 visits. No significant change was seen in acetaminophen use in nonpregnant female emergency department patients. For children aged 5 to 17 years, an increase was seen in new outpatient leucovorin prescriptions during the study period (OER, 1.71), corresponding to an absolute rate change of 17.5 prescriptions per 100,000 visits.

"The results were astounding to me," Faust said in a statement. "It can take years, even decades, for high-quality research to finally reach clinicians. Here, by using the White House, it was done overnight. Unfortunately, they're claiming breakthroughs that simply haven't occurred."

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Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

Source: HealthDay

Posted : 2026-03-18 02:00

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