The results of a study funded by the National Institutes of Health on the mental effects of puberty blockers on gender dysphoric youth were unceremoniously posted online last month following months of outcry about the author’s suppression of her findings.
The study, authored by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy and colleagues and posted online before journal publication, found that depression symptoms in adolescents diagnosed with gender dysphoria “did not change significantly over 24 months” of being on puberty blockers.
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The paper has been the subject of intense debate and even the focus of congressional inquiry. Olson-Kennedy told the New York Times in October that she and her colleagues had delayed the publication of the federally funded research because they did “not want our work to be weaponized.”
The study began in 2015 with a $5.7 million NIH grant paying scientists to administer puberty blockers to 94 children between the ages of 8 and 16 to monitor depression symptoms, including suicidality.
The protracted project eventually ended up receiving nearly $10 million from the federal biomedical research agency.
The new study’s findings of no change in depression symptoms contradict those of a Dutch study from 2011 that found puberty blocker treatment did relieve the depressive symptoms of gender dysphoric minors between 12 and 16 years old. The Dutch study is largely regarded as the foundation for recommendations for providing puberty blockers to gender dysphoric youth.
Olson-Kennedy and her co-authors argue in the paper that, although the patients’ mental health remained stable during the study period, “it is likely that puberty blockers prevent the deterioration of mental health.”
Dr. Kurt Miceli, medical director for the advocacy group Do No Harm, which advocates against youth gender transitions, told the Washington Examiner that the research team’s conclusion “resembles a hypothesis rather than a definitive finding.”
“A clear acknowledgment of their data would reveal that puberty blockers offer no mental health benefit. Despite this, the release of these results had been delayed for years,” Miceli said. “The full study once again demonstrates a lack of high-quality evidence supporting the so-called ‘affirming’ model.”
The public outcry over the lack of accountability for Olson-Kennedy delaying publication for political reasons prompted Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the Senate health committee chairman, and several other Republican senators to launch an investigation in December into the study’s funding from NIH and its annual progress reports.
A spokesperson for Cassidy declined to comment on the developments and the status of the investigation.
Olson-Kennedy runs the Center for Transyouth Health and Development through Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and is one of the most prominent youth gender physicians in the United States.
According to the Stop the Harm database, produced by Do No Harm, the CTYHD prescribed 103 minors with cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers between 2019 and 2023, as well as performed 165 cross-sex surgical procedures on minors.
In December, one of Olson-Kennedy’s former patients, 20-year-old Clementine Breen, filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against Olson-Kennedy for not referring Breen for psychiatric evaluation before taking on invasive and permanent gender transition interventions.
Under Olson-Kennedy’s care, Breen started puberty blockers when she was 12, took testosterone at 13, and underwent a double mastectomy at 14.
On May 1, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a 400-page report on the detrimental effects of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for youth diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
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The metareview of existing literature concluded that partisan politics influenced the Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, in their standards of care guidance.
Last week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a guidance letter to healthcare providers and state medical boards to “no longer rely on discredited guidelines that promote these dangerous interventions for children based upon ideology, not evidence.”