Article on the side-effects of Lupron

There are about 1,000 children in the UK on these drugs. Orders of magnitude more in the US and Canada. We could be talking six figures of children. CHILDREN. Off label, with known serious side effects and possibly many more unknown because research is political and it's not being done.

Anybody arguing that this is a good state of affairs needs to take a long, hard look at themselves.

NatLuc Please don't patronise me, I don't appreciate it.

There are Doctors out there including web Doctors who do hand these out, as I'm sure you know full well.

Even if one child is effected by the horrific effects of this medication, that's one child too many!

They shouldn’t be passed out at all. they are being used off label, in an uncontrolled way, with no justification in terms of risk : benefit. There is going to be a huge population who suffer awful effects from this down the line - it’s going to be a scandal of epic proportions.

I am a scientist and I now work in drug trials - there is absolutely no way that we could dose a child with these drugs. None. Absolutely none. Or anything even close to the side effects they have. No ethics committee in the world would do it, and I personally would refuse to work on such a trial (which wouldn’t happen anyway , due to the rules on testing stuff on kids.)

It’s so hard to include children in trials as it is - I’ve run a couple of paediatric trials and the rules are rightly incredibly strict. And those were both for paediatric cancer indications, so kids who would probably die unless treated.

To give a healthy child these drugs is just mind boggling to me. This entire population of children are taking part in an experiment with no ethics oversight, and no medical oversight.

The rules for drug research were drawn up in the wake of some horrific human rights abuses - the neuremberg trials started the process and it was refined with things like thalidomide, and tunguskee. I would encourage you to read up on the sort of stuff that happened to make these rules necessary- be warned, it’s disturbing.

Like our child safeguarding framework, every one of those pedantic, strict rules was brought in because someone did something awful to another human being.

To see that ethical framework discarded like this makes me feel very disturbed indeed. I feel like I’m shouting into the void, watching a terrible accident happening in slow motion and unable to do anything about it.

spontaneousgiventime It is not that easy to get blockers though. They aren't passed out like candy. Consistent, Persistent and Insistent. Not all trans children will meet the bar to be warranted such intervention.

Yes these are powerful drugs and more research needs to be done. - Please do not take this to mean that I am condoning experimenting on children. I am not. I am sure there are other non sacrificial methods that can be used to better understand the long term effects? I do not know anything about how drugs are screened and tested before being made available or how they might be further tested when under investigation.

What has happened to these individuals is awful. There is no denying that. But with all drugs there is a change of things going wrong.. How many people have these drugs helped on the flip side?

This is not scaremongering. When one of my DC was a teenager they were refused anti depressants after their dad died. Yet at the same age would have been on puberty blockers for years. Lupron is an off label cancer drug given to kids. Stop fucking minimising cos it suits your agenda. These are children who know no better.

Bruxism sorry, typo - tooth and jaw grinding.

'oh well all drugs of a class have the same mechanism of work so therefore the same side effects'.

That’s not what I’m saying though.

What you experienced are fairly well defined side effects that vary within class. Citalopram for example is well known as one of the ‘jittery’ SSRIs. Brixism amd palpitations are fairly common. Palpitations with no cardiac effects seen on an ECG would not be classed as a serious side effect.

If you’d experienced serotonin toxicity, you’d be off the entire class.

What I’m saying is that there are minor differences within a class - this is exactly what you’ve experienced actually. The class of drugs works on the same pathways, however, and so while there will be minor differences in side effects (which is what you’ve experienced) the core mechanism remains the same.

If you took penicillin and had an allergic reaction you wouldnt routinely be given ANY of the penicillin type drugs.

To say Lupron might be bad but triptorelin is fine is simply not true. These drugs are incredibly powerful we have no long term follow up data on them And they are being investigated for serious, irreversible effects.

There is no way in hell I would allow a child of mine to go on these drugs for any reason at all. I say that as someone familiar with drug development, drug safety and adverse event reporting. No. Way. In. hell.

They are also, as resistance actively contraindicated in mental health conditions.

This is going to be a huge scandal.

Adults females are often limited to 6 months of lupron at a time because of its effects on bone density. Are such limits being imposed on children, whose trajectory of bone growth is going to be different? If not how can we know if the effects are the same in children, less severe or somehow much worse - in which case we’d be storing up a cohort of people with significant health vulnerabilities in later years. There’s a reason drug use is carefully monitored and tracked, this is it.

People actually defending medical experimentation on children / young people. Off label drugs, no research, no idea of the long term outcomes and children / young people below the age of consent taking these drugs.
Yet here they are - on a board for feminists / women - arguing with us that this is OK.

Exactly, hypothesising about mechanism etc isn’t good enough when they’re being given to children and touted as harmless. The studies must be done.

Just because someone might react badly to one drug in a class does not mean they will react the same way to them all. Nor does it mean that a given side effect is as prevalent with the other drugs in the same class.

It would be great to have the scientific studies to prove this, especially when these drugs are given off-licence to children, don't you think?

Bowlofbabelfish - To stay with your SSRI analogy, I think it is a bit unfair to say that 'oh well all drugs of a class have the same mechanism of work so therefore the same side effects'.

I was originally placed on Citalopram at University whilst trying to cure myself of being trans. Thinking it was just my depression, that getting rid of lifelong depression would make it go away.

Citalopram gave me heart palpitations which I uncomfortably experienced when I tried to go on my normal 12K run. But I had to stop the running due to other side effects of the Citalopram. So once they subsided and I could run again, this is when I discovered the palpitations.

I went to the doctor, he pulled me off the Citalopram immediately and following a cardiogram was put on to Sertraline. Which gave me the same 'other' side effects I mentioned but without the palpitations.

I think Snappity is right to point out that it is scaremongering a bit. Just because someone might react badly to one drug in a class does not mean they will react the same way to them all. Nor does it mean that a given side effect is as prevalent with the other drugs in the same class.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/XZjhcLhQW08Ylw5b0p9xgH/gender-dysphoria-transgender

Young people who are distressed because their bodies are developing during puberty can be given treatment to stop these changes. The relief this provides helps them to make better judgements about how they want to live their lives as adults. If they wish, they can stop taking the medication at any time. It is safe, and its effects are reversible

Did anyone get a reply from the BBC by the way if they queried the statement on their website that these drugs are harmless? I believe a few of us complained about it,

You are extrapolating reports concerning one drug (Lupron) to other drugs (eg gosselerin acetate and Triptorelin) without any evidence.

They are the same class of drug acting on the same pathway via the same mechanisms. That’s why ‘Lupron and the GnRH analog class’ are the subject of investigation. They’re almost the same thing.

They will and do share mechanisms of action, side effects etc. They are all the same class of drug. If one member of the class has such broad side effects the other will too.

An analogy: when someone goes to the doc and gets prescribed an SSRI for depression. They’re all the same class of drug acting in the same way. There will be minor differences in action but a GP will be happy to switch a patient from say Prozac to sertraline because they are the same class of drug doing the same thing.

I am also concerned at the potential 5-10 point drop in IQ associated with use of puberty blockers and overall cognitive development generally.

Right. Babel has explained the situation perfectly, as ever.

Let's move on with the topic of the thread, which is GnRH analogs in general and not be distracted by flailing attempts to pretend otherwise.

This is very concerning. I hope the parents of transgender children take note of this and refuse to give these types of drugs to their children. Otherwise lives will be completely ruined.

That's scaremongering. You are extrapolating reports concerning one drug (Lupron) to other drugs (eg gosselerin acetate and Triptorelin) without any evidence.

snappity increasing height IS often part of the reason they’re used for stopping precocious puberty, as most children don’t grow past puberty significantly, so there’s more clinical rationale for that than for using these drugs to block puberty in the case of gender identity questioning. If used for increasing height as part of stopping precocious puberty they are being used as licenced.

The numbers being given them for height are well below those for blocking as well (recombinant somatotropin is now available thank goodness after the human derived stuff which used to be used.)

These drugs should NOT be being prescribed at all - they’re being used off label in children questioning gender identity.

What’s even more concerning is that lobby groups are pushing these drugs as a safe and harmless pause button on puberty - that is not ethically acceptable.

It says something about priorities that the immediate reaction to that article in the comments here is that we must stop using puberty blockers while entirely ignoring the disturbing point that drugs are being prescribed to increase height.

Triptorelin otherwise known as Decapeptyl is what I am given every 3 months. I recently had my second injection of it.

I would say that Decapeptyl is far preferable to Cyproterone Acetate.

1000 in the UK is horrifying. I dread to think what the numbers must be across the Atlantic Lang. Unbelievable that doctors would put children through this.