The UK health secretary, Wes Streeting, has told Brits to ignore what Donald Trump says about medicine after the US president claimed a link between taking paracetamol and autism.

Speaking at the White House this week, flanked by his own vaccine-sceptic health and human services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Trump said use of the painkiller Tylenol – an American brand of paracetamol – by pregnant women led to a higher risk of autism in their children.

“I trust doctors over President Trump,” Streeting told ITV’s Lorraine programme, and the claims have been widely condemned and countered by medical experts around the world, amid ongoing debate about rising rates of the neurodevelopmental disorder in the US, UK and elsewhere.

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