Paracetamol affecting babies fertility?

[socktastic]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-35418779

What do you make of this? I've been taking paracetamol recently as have a horrible cough and cold and left with horrendous headache. Of course, the advice from the doctors is that paracetamol is perfectly safe.

Would you act on this or take it with a pinch of salt?

I've had to take paracetamol on semi regular basis due to pelvic pain. Take it with a pinch of salt just take as minimally as you can.

Guess what.... Years and years and years ago our parents/pil were pregnant with us and we've somehow managed to reproduce. I 100% take it with a pinch of salt x

Years and years ago mother's didn't tmake loads of drugs - Maybe that's the point! It's only since the 70s that over-the-counter drugs became popliar, so the side eeffects are being seen now. Abstain for the sake of the baby - for their whole life.

I wouldn't act on a news story. I would act on health advice.

I avoid all medicines when pregnant as they tell you somethings safe then later down the line oh dear we made a mistake oops

So for me I don't take anything even though I get terrible SPD as I'm too worried about baby.

Media reporting of scientific researching is often quite poor, so I'd always try and look at the original report if possible. In this case I'm not sure it's available yet. However I note that the release from the University of Edinburgh (where both authors work) says:

The team recommends that pregnant women should stick with current guidelines to use painkillers at the lowest possible dose, for the shortest possible time.

The study looked at rats, not people. They gave them paracetamol for nine days (dose not reported). Rats are quite different to people (obviously!) for example their pregnancy is only 21 days, so 9 out of 21 days is quite significant, OP I very much doubt your few days of a normal sort of dose is in any way similar to this study. I'd really try not worry too much.

It's a single study. Single studies aren't used to set health policy because until several groups have replicated a finding it can easily be wrong simply by chance (with the standard 95% confidence levels 5% of studies will be wrong simply by chance.)

It's an interesting finding but until it's replicated by other groups, in other species, I'm not st all worried.

Paracetamol used correctly has a good record. Drugs do get constantly monitored after release and all adverse events are reported and collated. If paracetamol caused significant effects we'd know it. That doesn't rule out subtle effects of course but for me, a single study is not enough.
And as nooka says, media reporting of science is truly dire. Even the broadsheets are terrible at it.

Our lab once found a gene modification that when bred into nice that naturally had a mutation found in humans which causes early death from colon cancer, the mice lived twice as long. Still died early but it seemed to offset the effects a bit.

This was reported in the media as we'd cured aging. Sigh...

It is safe to take paracetemol when pregnant though. I didn't say our parents were taking 40 pills a day did I? Occasional, therapeutic use is fine.

Abstain for the sake of the baby -for their whole life

??? So no Calpol for teething, post immunisation etc ???

"This was reported in the media as we'd cured aging" palms face

Yeah I would take it with a pinch of salt. I wouldn't take paracetamol (or any other painkillers, pregnant or not) for the sake of it, or take more than you need but if you need it and medical advice supports it then I wouldn't worry. Even if you ignore the question of how much we can infer about human health from studies on rats, there's no indication of what kind of dose would be the human equivalent - it may not be anything like what you'd be likely to take for a cold.