Mayo Clinic experts say puberty blockers can cause shriveled testicles, fertility problems and even cancer among trans children who take them, in the latest study to raise alarm about transgender medicine.
The findings cast doubt on the “reversibility” of puberty blockers, a key claim by trans activists who promote the drugs, saying they only “pause” puberty and buy time for trans children to make decisions about their gender.
Instead, researchers say that puberty blockers harm testicular development and sperm production in ways that are not completely reversible and could affect users’ ability to have children when they grow up.
“At the tissue level, we observed mild to severe sex gland atrophy in children treated with puberty blockers,” geneticist Nagarajan Kannan and others wrote in the 33-page study.
33-page Mayo Clinic study revealed damage at the cellular level in puberty blockers
Trans activists say puberty blockers and other gender-affirming care save lives among suicide-prone group
“We provide unprecedented histological evidence revealing deleterious responses of pediatric testicular sex glands” to medications.
The study has not yet been peer-reviewed, but has been endorsed by Genspect, a global advocacy group against medical transitions, ‘Harry Potter’ author JK Rowling, Benjamin Ryan, a prominent science writer, and others.
It takes aim at one of the most controversial issues of our time: whether to provide medications and surgery to children experiencing gender confusion or “dysphoria” and ask their parents or doctors for help.
Puberty blockers were originally developed to suppress the hormones of minors who started puberty too early.
Today they are prescribed off-label to an increasing number of trans children.
Proponents of gender-affirming care, as it is known, say it saves lives for a suicide-prone group, and that puberty blockers help preteens “pause” their puberty and buy time to weigh decisions that They alter their lives.
Critics warn about the growing number of young people who identify as trans and say puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries are often unnecessary and probably dangerous when counseling gets better results.
Puberty Blocker Prescriptions Continue to Rise in the United States
Most children who are treated with puberty blockers go on to receive cross-sex hormones, like this patient at the Blue Mountain Clinic in Montana.
Republican lawmakers have banned puberty blockers and other trans care for minors in nearly two dozen states.
Norway, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom are among a growing list of European countries that have restricted or stopped trans interventions in children altogether.
“Whistleblowers have been saying this for years: puberty blockers are not a pause button!” Genspect published about the research.
The study “reveals potential irreversible damage to fertility in patients taking these medications,” the group added.
For their study, the Mayo researchers analyzed one of the largest collections of testicular samples from patients ages 0 to 17, including those with gender dysphoria who did and did not take puberty blockers.
They focused on 87 children, including 16 boys between the ages of 10 and 16 who identified as girls.
Nine of them were already taking puberty blockers: one for just three months and another for more than four years.
Among the nine taking blockers, two had abnormal features of the testicles that could be detected by physical examination.
The researchers highlighted the case of a 12-year-old boy who had taken puberty blockers for 14 months.
Puberty blockers are prescribed off-label to increasing numbers of trans children
Chloe Cole, 19, who transitioned to male at 13 before regretting her decision at 16, is among a growing number of young people regretting their trans treatments and seeking to reverse them. She says she regrets taking puberty blockers when she was 13.
Elon Musk tweeted about Britain’s decision to phase out puberty blockers for children.
Nearly 60 percent of their sex glands had “completely atrophied,” they said.
There was also an “emergence of microlithiasis,” or small clumps of calcium that are linked to testicular cancer.
In a 14-year-old patient who had been taking puberty blockers for four years, they found that his sperm-producing cells were atrophied.
Scientists at the world-famous clinic said the results were worrying but more research was needed.
Evidence of “sex gland atrophy and abnormalities of histological data raises potential concern regarding the complete ‘reversibility’ and reproductive fitness” of sperm in boys taking puberty blockers, he said.
The study was first reported by christina buttonsindependent journalist.
It comes on the heels of the so-called ‘WPATH files’: leaked messages from the world’s leading body for gender-affirming care, which showed doctors behaving more like activists who were silent about the huge downsides of trans medicine.