Where did the 'fact' that puberty blockers are reversible come from?

Warrior I think this was one of the problems highlighted at GIDS, that there was no record of outcomes/future health. As highlighted by pp, so few children taking puberty blockers do not progress to cross-sex hormones that it might be difficult to draw any statistically meaningful conclusions anyway. Probably there is no peer-reviewed evidence (cos who would fund it 🙄) either supporting or rejecting - except for on-label treatment of course

Exactly.

What I think the data does show (although I don’t have a reference to hand) is that children declaring a trans status are much more likely to go on to take wrong sex hormones if they are given puberty blockers than if they are not.

This may be interesting reading: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2121238

The interview with the Dutch protocol clinicians on the Gender A wider lens podcast is also fascinating.

The key passage is this:

"Cohen-Kettenis had two collaborators at Amsterdam. One was Henriette Delemarre-van de Waal, a pediatric endocrinologist. She had expertise using the new GnRHa drugs—developed in the 1980s—to treat precocious puberty and other conditions (e.g. Schroor et al. Citation 1995)."
...
"The Dutch protocol comprised not just a drug (GnRHa) and a treatment regime (from age 12 or Tanner stage 2) but also two discursive claims. The first was reversibility. The initial article declared GnRHa to be “fully reversible; in other words, no lasting undesired effects are to be expected” (Gooren & Delemarre-van de Waal, Citation1996, p. 72). The phrasing hinted at the lack of actual evidence. Suppressing puberty for a short time, on the order of months, might be expected to have a negligible effect on a child’s development. Yet the Dutch protocol entailed suppression for up to four years (from age 12 to 16); for FG it lasted at least five years (from 13 to 18).

It was implausible to claim that suppressing puberty for so many years would have no lasting effect if the child were to stop GnRHa and restart their natal sex hormones. On occasion this was acknowledged, as when Delemarre-van de Waal and Cohen-Kettenis’ (Citation 2006, p. S137) manifesto stated that “It is not clear yet how pubertal suppression will influence brain development.”

Ten years later, however, Cohen-Kettenis still claimed that puberty suppression was “completely reversible” (Cohen-Kettenis, Citation2016; see also de Vries et al., Citation2016). The postulate of reversibility, however implausible, helped to avoid the question of whether a child aged 12 (or below) could give consent to this endocrinological experiment. HBIGDA’s Standards of Care warned that cross-sex hormones “are not, or are not readily, reversible” (HBIGDA, Citation1985, p. 83). By pronouncing GnRHa to be reversible, the Dutch protocol demarcated a boundary between one endocrinological intervention and another.

Ah you're right - I thought it was a typo in the post I quoted but it was in there twice. Bloody clear explanation though!

The effects of puberty blockers are reversible. If a person stops taking puberty blockers, the effects of puberty will return or resume. That's what reversible means in this context.

Reversible and irreversible have specific pharmacological definitions.

“A reversible antagonist binds non-covalently to the receptor, therefore can be “washed out”. An irreversible antagonist binds covalently to the receptor and cannot be displaced by either competing ligands or washing.”
https://www.tocris.com/resources/pharmacological-glossary

I wonder if this has been (purposely?) misunderstood. It doesn’t mean that when you stop taking a drug everything goes back to what it was before.

The NHS website used to state that PBs were fully reversible. Also no mention of the side effects of these drugs. Here's an archived page from 2019...

https://archive.ph/LkOew

"The effects of treatment with GnRH analogues are considered to be fully reversible, so treatment can usually be stopped at any time after a discussion between you, your child and your MDT."

The completely trans captured NHS (to the extent that staff place male rapists on women's wards and lie to woman raped on said wards that it was impossible as no man was present), even that NHS now states that
"Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria. Although GIDS advises this is a physically reversible treatment if stopped, it is not known what the psychological effects may be"

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/

They are routinely used for girls with precocious puberty and they are not causing issues so yes they are reversible because all they do is hold puberty in stasis. My dps dd was on them for sen/precocious puberty reasons

DNiece underwent investigations for precocious puberty about 7 years ago.

According to SIL, the endocrinologist said the they avoid using blockers unless in very extreme cases, and then only for as short a period as posible, and never more than a few months.

DN was considered not to be extreme according to tests, so no blockers were given, which the endo was very pleased about (ND was around 7 at the time, doctor said that periods starting after the age of 8 was very early but still within the normal/healthy range).

I always read the endocrinologist's relief as 'avoid like the plague (in children) unless we are talking major, major future health issues'.

Can I ask how long ago she stopped taking them?