Key Points
According to new research, skeletal size may be altered by gender-affirming hormone therapy only if puberty has also been suppressed during adolescence...
The study, presented at the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Meeting in Liverpool and carried out by Amsterdam University Medical Center (UMC) in the Netherlands, not only help researchers further understand the roles sex hormones play on the skeleton but may also improve counselling on gender-affirming treatment in transgender individuals...
To investigate this, researchers from Amsterdam UMC analysed data on the shoulder and pelvis dimensions of 121 transgender women and 122 transgender men who were either undergoing gender-affirming hormone therapy with or without previously taking puberty blockers or had not taken any therapy...
The researchers found that only transgender men who had been treated with puberty blockers from early puberty, followed by hormone therapy, had broader shoulders and a smaller pelvic inlet (upper opening of the pelvis) compared to untreated individuals, while transgender women had smaller shoulders only after treatment from early puberty...
To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the effect of both gender-affirming hormones and puberty blockers on the pelvic dimensions, said Lidewij Boogers, a PhD student at Amsterdam UMC who led the study...
