What are puberty blockers? What are the benefits and risks for transgender children?

Puberty blockers are medications that stop the body from producing oestrogen and testosterone. In the clinic, they’re called gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists (GnRHa). If adolescents take these medications during puberty, bodily changes associated with puberty are prevented.

If these medications are stopped, these bodily changes resume. Puberty blockers have been used since the early 1980s to treat early-onset puberty in young children. Beginning in the 1990s , puberty blockers have also been used in transgender adolescents to help prevent the unwanted development of masculinising or feminising physical changes that occur during puberty.

What are the benefits for transgender adolescents? Many transgender children describe anxiety about unwanted physical changes that will occur because of puberty, especially as adolescence approaches. For those presumed female at birth, these unwanted changes include breast development and starting periods. For those presumed male at birth, these unwanted changes may include the development of a deeper voice, an Adam’s apple, facial hair and a masculine physique.

Many of these physical changes are irreversible and result not only in gender dysphoria but also misgendering. This is when transgender people are mistakenly assumed to be the gender they were presumed at birth. Misgendering can be a significant and lifelong source of distress .

Some transgender people will seek out surgery to address these unwanted irreversible changes. Thi.