1/ I transcribed this morning’s very interesting BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour interview with Deborah Cohen regarding the recent NHS website updates for the description and possible side effects of puberty blockers. As ever, this is how I heard it, and particularly because this one

2/ was very long and contained a lot of quoting from sources, I recommend anybody interested to also listen to the original audio beginning at 14:38 here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000kgsj

I will ask the thread reader app to unroll these messages at the end of this thread.

3/ Jane Garvey: Now at the end of May, the NHS website changed its information on the use of puberty blockers. It had said that these drugs, used to suppress hormones at the start of puberty in children with gender dysphoria, were fully reversible. Now, the information is a

4/ little more cautious. Deborah Cohen is the Health Correspondent for Newsnight.

Deborah Cohen: What the old version said was: “The effects of treatment with GnHR analogues…” and that’s the name of the drug, we use one called Triptorelin, “…are considered to be fully

5/ reversible, so treatment can usually be stopped at any time after a discussion between you, your child and your MDT”, so that’s Multi Disciplinary Team. Now the new version has changed actually quite substantially, and that says now: “Little is known about the long-term side

6/ effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria, although the Gender Identity Development Service…” and that’s the clinic that young people go to if they are questioning their gender identity, “…advises this is a physically reversible treatment if

7/ stopped, it is not known what the psychological effects may be”. It also adds: “It’s also not known whether hormone blockers effect the development of the teenage brain, or children’s bones.” So, it’s recognising that there’s a lot of uncertainty about what we know and

8/ understand about puberty blockers in the long-term.

JG: But presumably that uncertainty isn’t new? It already existed when the previous advice was on the NHS website?

DC: Yeah, I mean, we know actually, quite little. These are, drugs in children, it’s a drug that is given

9/ for very different uses in adults, but in children it’s used for precocious puberty, and that’s what you call off-label use. Now, off-label means, when you licence a drug you get a licence to sell it for a certain issue, for a certain condition, because it’s quite well