If you’re pregnant or considering pregnancy, should you take acetaminophen? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Federal officials have suggested that use of acetaminophen during pregnancy may increase the risk for autism in offspring. Heather Volk, an autism expert at Johns Hopkins, says use of acetaminophen may be a surrogate for something else.

Volk: Could be an infection or a fever and might be some other systematic immune related response. We've had a hard time really accounting well for dose and timing of acetaminophen as well in many of the population based studies. It is available over the counter and oftentimes it's in other products where you might not think it is there. So you might not even realize you've taken it. This makes the study relationship based on the current data really tough to interpret I think for a lot of people. The best advice we can give to anyone who is pregnant or considering pregnancy is to take the best care of themselves and seek good prenatal care as much as possible.        :31

A new metanalysis published in the BMJ takes a look at all the research available on autism risk and acetaminophen use during pregnancy and concludes that there is no association. Volk notes that more research is underway. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.