NYT HEALTH: They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost?
By Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett
Section: Health
Source: New York Times
Published Date: November 14, 2022 at 02:00AM
At 13, Jacy Chavira felt increasingly uncomfortable with her maturing body and was beginning to believe she was a boy. Use the drug, her endocrinologist in Southern California recommended, and puberty would be suspended.
An 11-year-old in New York with deepening depression expressed a desire to no longer be a girl. A therapist told the family the drug was the preteen’s best option, and a local doctor agreed.
“‘Puberty blockers really help kids like this,’” the child’s mother recalled the therapist saying. “It was presented as a tourniquet that would stop the hemorrhaging.”
As the number of adolescents who identify as transgender grows, drugs known as puberty blockers have become the first line of intervention for the youngest ones seeking medical treatment.
Their use is typically framed as a safe — and reversible — way to buy time to weigh a medical transition and avoid the anguish of growing into a body that feels wrong. Transgender adolescents suffer from disproportionately high rates of depression and other mental health issues. Studies show that the drugs have eased some patients’ gender dysphoria — a distress over the mismatch of their birth sex and gender identity.
By Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett
Section: Health
Source: New York Times
Published Date: November 14, 2022 at 02:00AM
Puberty blockers can ease transgender youths’ anguish and buy time to weigh options. But concerns are growing about long-term physical effects and other consequences.
Eleven-year-old Emma Basques had identified as a girl since toddlerhood. Now, as she worried about male puberty starting, a Phoenix pediatrician advised: Take a drug to stop it.At 13, Jacy Chavira felt increasingly uncomfortable with her maturing body and was beginning to believe she was a boy. Use the drug, her endocrinologist in Southern California recommended, and puberty would be suspended.
An 11-year-old in New York with deepening depression expressed a desire to no longer be a girl. A therapist told the family the drug was the preteen’s best option, and a local doctor agreed.
“‘Puberty blockers really help kids like this,’” the child’s mother recalled the therapist saying. “It was presented as a tourniquet that would stop the hemorrhaging.”
As the number of adolescents who identify as transgender grows, drugs known as puberty blockers have become the first line of intervention for the youngest ones seeking medical treatment.
Their use is typically framed as a safe — and reversible — way to buy time to weigh a medical transition and avoid the anguish of growing into a body that feels wrong. Transgender adolescents suffer from disproportionately high rates of depression and other mental health issues. Studies show that the drugs have eased some patients’ gender dysphoria — a distress over the mismatch of their birth sex and gender identity.
“Anxiety drains away,” said Dr. Norman Spack, who pioneered the use of puberty blockers for trans youth in the United States and is one of many physicians who believe the drugs can be lifesaving. “You can see these kids being so relieved.”
But as an increasing number of adolescents identify as transgender — in the United States, an estimated 300,000 ages 13 to 17 and an untold number who are younger — concerns are growing among some medical professionals about the consequences of the drugs, a New York Times examination found. The questions are fueling government reviews in Europe, prompting a push for more research and leading some prominent specialists to reconsider at what age to prescribe them and for how long. A small number of doctors won’t recommend them at all.
Dutch doctors first offered puberty blockers to transgender adolescents three decades ago, typically following up with hormone treatment to help patients transition. Since then, the practice has spread to other countries, with varying protocols, little documentation of outcomes and no government approval of the drugs for that use, including by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/health/puberty-blockers-transgender.html
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