Puberty Blockers Temporarily Slow Bone Growth, Recovery Seen With Hormone Therap

Submitted ⁨⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨TRAHR@quokk.au⁩ to ⁨science@mander.xyz⁩

https://medicaldialogues.in/amp/pediatrics-neonatology/news/puberty-blockers-temporarily-slow-bone-growth-recovery-seen-with-hormone-therapy-jama-178233

Puberty Blockers Temporarily Slow Bone Growth, Recovery Seen With Hormone Therapy: JAMA

A systematic review and meta-analysis published in the journal of JAMA Pediatrics found that puberty suppression in transgender and gender-diverse adolescents temporarily slows bone development, particularly at the lumbar spine. While absolute bone mineral density remained stable during puberty suppression, it increased modestly after gender-affirming hormone therapy, with partial recovery of bone health when compared to peers.

Puberty represents a key window for achieving peak bone mass, which plays an important role in determining fracture risk later in life. As the use of puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormone therapy continues to expand in gender-diverse youth, understanding their long-term effects on skeletal health has become increasingly important.

A new systematic review and meta-analysis has found that while pubertal suppression with temporarily slows bone mineral accrual in transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) adolescents, subsequent gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) promotes substantial recovery in bone health. However, researchers say the extent of long-term “catch-up” remains uncertain, underscoring the importance of careful monitoring during treatment.

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TRAHR@quokk.au ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
If trans children were allowed to access HRT they would not need to be on blockers. This is forced onto them by cis people.

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- LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Not necessarily always the case. Some people might want more time to understand and explore their identity before their body is irreversibly changed.
  
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  - TRAHR@quokk.au ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Most of the time however it is because we must cater to cis people refusing to accept that we know our own bodies. And we half these half cocked compromises so their sensibilities aren’t hurt.
    
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lemmysmash@piefed.social ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I still can’t comprehend how a person could willingly take their (or their kids’!) overall healthy body, break it literally to the bones, and then keep patching it to restore some of its normal functioning. I’m all in for gender diversity, but this is just beyond fucked, sorry.

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- rowinxavier@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  To be clear, people do this all the time with medications for suicidal ideation and depression. Those drugs are less effective at preventing suicide than gender affirming care in trans people. If we want to talk about the harms of a medical intervention we always need to keep the harms of the alternative in mind.
  
  I take Warfarin and could therefore have a major bleed where I just don’t stop bleeding. I take it because if I didn’t I would have clotting which would lead to really bad outcomes like a stroke. The stroke is more likely without warfarin than the bleed is with the warfarin, so that is an overall lower risk.
  
  In the same way, if you look at trans kids who are hitting puberty they have two paths, gender affirming care or not. The not path has lots of extra harms, including but not limited to suicide, self harm, depression, anxiety, and so on. The gender affirming care side has bone density issues during the period of puberty blockers, difficulties with accessing medical care, and much much lower rates of the harms available in the not path. The balance is clear, the experts agree, only a vanishingly small minority of politically and financially motivated people push the other way. The parallels to the climate change “debate” are clear. This is not reasonable and rational disagreement, this is ideological and not science based.
  
  I will keep taking my warfarin and I hope the kids impacted by this keep taking their puberty blockers as long as that is beneficial for them.
  
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- astropenguin5@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You are vastly overrating the effects here.
  
  Do you understand how detrimental gender dysphoria is to one’s mental health? It generally causes pretty bad depression and often suicidality if not able to be improved, and especially in those forced to be closeted. Going through the wrong puberty makes this even worse, so being able to delay that to allow a child to more fully form their sense of self is valuable.
  
  If I ever have a kid (if I have kids) going through that I would much rather take the slight risk of delayed bone growth to let them make the best informed decision they can about their gender, and so they aren’t depressed for years and potentially kill themselves. Bone strength problems are also usually treatable with other things too.
  
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  - lemmysmash@piefed.social ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    So the plan is:
    
    delay depression / mask mental health challenges
    
    fuck up physical health
    
    wait until depression comes back, multiplied by the poor physical health
    
    “you’re adult now, darling, deal with it as you wish”
    
    Yeah, this makes perfect sense.
    
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  - lemmysmash@piefed.social ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s always easy to “fix” something you’re struggling with at the expense of something that’s pretty good. But it always bites you back. Always.
    
    It’s not easy (not easy at all!) to stop, and start working on the main thing, but that’s the only way to deal with it — otherwise you fuck both things beyond repair.
    
    And I’m not talking just identity and puberty, I’m talking all kinds of mental problems, relationship problems, family problems etc being solved at the expense of physical health (and for some people the other way around — physical problems being solved at the expense of mental health).
    
    There resiliency margin of your “good” part is not that huge, and once it’s exhausted (and be sure the life will exhaust it even without your “help"), they both start hammering you.
    
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- a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Is your plan to let them be miserable and die from suicide shortly afterward?
  
  Claiming that this is about some sort of diversity is pretty fucked. You got to talk to some trans folks one day.
  
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- TRAHR@quokk.au ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Oh shut up.
  
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  - lemmysmash@piefed.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Why would I? I’m free to express my opinion on things as long as I’m not harassing anyone (which I’m not). You disagree and don’t want to see it? Block button to the rescue.
    
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