A 2020 study was the first of its kind to use an animal model to examine the potential neurological and psychiatric effects of puberty-blocking drugs — 22 years after doctors began prescribing them to gender dysphoric adolescents on an experimental basis.
The results found that treatment with leuprolide, the drug used to suppress puberty, had “profound effects” of increased depression in female mice; in male mice, increased stress and a loss of interest in female mice were reported.
In 1998, Dutch clinicians began using leuprolide (GnRH agonists) to suppress puberty as an intervention for pediatric gender dysphoria, and over the years published two studies on their use in this context. The problematic “Dutch protocol,” as it became known, was later adopted by the United States to form the bedrock of the “gender-affirming” model of care, which deploys the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to “affirm” minors in their chosen trans-identity.
Far from “completely safe and reversible” and “a pause button on puberty,” as proponents of “gender-affirming care” claim, the children who begin taking puberty blockers during the first signs of puberty and go on to take cross-sex hormones, which constitute the vast majority, will become sterilized and may never be able to achieve orgasm.
The New York Times investigated the deleterious effects that puberty blockers have on bone health, and published an article after reviewing the scientific literature and interviewing over 50 doctors and academic experts around the world.