Puberty blockers may cause irreversible harm to young boys, Mayo Clinic study finds
When parents seek medical help for their gender-confused children, they are assured that puberty blockers are “reversible” treatment that pauses puberty, offering the “chance to explore gender identity.”
But a Mayo Clinic study published in late March found that boys who take puberty blockers may suffer “irreversible” harm.
The study, published on a website hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Minnesota, found that adolescent boys who take puberty blockers may experience fertility problems and atrophied testes.
Eleven Mayo Clinic scientists based in Rochester, Minnesota, studied the effect of puberty blockers on testicular cells. The researchers discovered “unprecedented” evidence “revealing detrimental pediatric testicular sex gland responses to [puberty blockers].”
While the Mayo Clinic website currently claims that puberty blockers simply “pause” puberty and “don’t cause permanent physical changes,” this recent study is just one of many that have sounded the alarm about the various harms of puberty blockers. In 2022, one study gained national attention after it found that putting children on puberty blockers causes irreversible harm to bone density.
The March study suggested that “abnormalities” from the data “raise a potential concern regarding the complete ‘reversibility’ and reproductive fitness of [spermatogonial stem cells]” for youth taking puberty blockers.
Researchers found that puberty blockers hurt the development of sperm production and could affect fertility when children grow up. They reported “mild-to-severe sex gland atrophy in puberty blocker-treated children.”
The study, which has not been peer-reviewed yet, looked at testicular samples for 87 patients under the age of 18. The study included 87 children total, with 16 boys who identified as girls and nine of whom took puberty blockers.