England's National Health Service banned the use of puberty blockers for children seeking treatment for gender dysphoria, citing limited research.
Puberty blockers, or gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues (GnRHa), is a class of drugs that suppresses sex hormones in adolescents by continually stimulating the pituitary gland. It will now only be available to children in limited ways, such as clinical trials.
The NHS's website said, "Puberty blockers (gonadotrophin-releasing hormone analogues) are not available to children and young people for gender incongruence or gender dysphoria because there is not enough evidence of safety and clinical effectiveness."
NHS England had previously ordered the London-based gender identity clinic at the Tavistock and Portman Trust to shut its doors amid safety concerns.
INFLUENTIAL TRANS CARE DOCTOR ONCE WARNED PUBERTY BLOCKERS COULD CAUSE PERMANENT SEXUAL DYSFUNCTION
Research has shown puberty blockers can be linked to poor mental health among trans kids.
A 2023 analysis from the University of Essex found that one-third of the youth with gender dysphoria (GD) experienced a decline in mental health after taking gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), also called puberty blockers.
The original study, which came from NHS's Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at Tavistock and University College London Hospitals (UCLH) in 2021, analyzed 44 children between the ages of 12 and 15 who took puberty-blocking drugs.
The children were all deemed "psychologically stable," but all of them had been classified as having gender dysphoria, with a "high likelihood of extreme psychological distress with ongoing pubertal development," the study authors wrote in the journal entry.
At the time, the researchers determined that the drugs had no impact on the kids’ mental health over a 36-month follow-up period. However, a new analysis of the study determined that 34% of the trans youth experienced a decline in mental health while taking puberty blockers.
At the same time, 37% reported no change in mental health and 29% noticed an improvement.
Some European countries, such as Finland, Norway, and Sweden have been exercising increased caution on using pharmaceutical interventions on children diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Swedish doctors at a top medical school released a systemic review of available medical literature on providing puberty blockers to children, and said its use for treating gender dysphoria should be considered "experimental."
Karolinska Institute doctors published an article in Acta Paediatrica on April 17, which found that GnRH analogues were found to delay bone maturation and mineral deposits, which may be only be partially restored by age 22 with cross-sex hormones. But they noted research was limited on that as well.
Ricard Nergårdh, a pediatric endocrinologist and researcher affiliated with the Karolinska Institute, told Swedish TV's Mission Investigate in 2021 that physicians try not to keep children on blockers for too long in order to minimize the risks of GnRH, which is also used to facilitate medical castration for some prostate cancers.
"What we call GnRH treatment is chemical castration. And it can affect mental health in an unintended, undesirable way. So it's very important that the patient and the patient's family are informed about this," he said.
"I'm very worried about it, and I think I'm not alone in that," he added about his concerns of GnRH for children.
Fox News' Melissa Rudy contributed to this report.
