The National Health Service in the United Kingdom banned the use of puberty blockers for children seeking treatment for gender dysphoria, citing limited research, some of which has shown such drugs can be linked to poor mental health among kids.
"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 writes on its website.
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.
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.
This week's decision to ban puberty blockers comes months after NHS England ordered the London-based gender identity clinic at the Tavistock and Portman Trust to shut its doors amid safety concerns.
Some other European countries, including Finland, Norway, and Sweden, and several Republican-led states in the United States have also instituted varying forms of restrictions 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.