The Health Service Executive is to review the use of puberty blockers in children [1] with gender dysphoria following an English decision to limit the use of the experimental treatment to clinical research.
The National Health Service (NHS) in England recently announced it was developing proposals that would see puberty blockers not being made routinely available outside of research.
Asked about the NHS’s change of policy, the HSE said it was reviewing this latest update and would establish a group this year to develop an updated model of care for the treatment of gender dysphoria. The group will be led by a clinical expert from a “relevant specialty”, a spokesman said.
“The HSE’s goal is to develop a person-centred model of care and invest in an integrated service that meets the needs of transgender people in Ireland.”
Blockers, used to pause puberty, work by suppressing the release of hormones. The long term effect of the drug is unclear, but one recent report into the English gender services said there were “gaps in evidence” around the drugs, while another described the quality of evidence to support their use as “very low”.
Most teens prescribed blockers go on to use cross-sex hormones and proceed to surgical procedures to ‘change’ their sex.