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Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, Reuters

US President Donald Trump told a news conference yesterday about what he said was the potential risk of taking the painkiller paracetamol – known as Tylenol in the US – during pregnancy which he has claimed is linked to autism.

During the event he mentioned several different numbers purporting to show autism rates in the US over time.

“It used to be one in 20,000, then one in 10,000, and I would say that’s probably 18 years ago. And now it’s one in 31 but in some areas it’s much worse”, he said.

He’s right in that the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, external , external(CDC) from 2022 – which provides official estimates for autism rates in the US and whose work is often cited by the current administration – suggests 1 in 31 eight-year-olds in the US have autism.

And this rate has increased from 18 years ago – but by nowhere near as much as Trump suggested.

There was no prevalence study for 2007 but in 2006 the CDC estimated the rate to be 1 in 110. In 2008 it was 1 in 88.

Most experts say rising rates of autism can primarily be attributed to changes in how the condition is diagnosed, as well as greater numbers of people being tested.

Trump also said about autism rates that he “gave numbers yesterday [Sunday] it’s one in 12, I was told that’s in California where they have for some reason a more severe problem”.

The CDC estimated that in 2022, external, about 1 in 12 eight-year old boys in California had autism – the highest rate for boys in the study across 16 US states.