Dozens of children to be given puberty blockers on NHS from 2026 | UK | News

Dozens of children will be given puberty blockers on the NHS from early 2026. Experts launched a clinical trial examining the effectiveness of puberty blockers; The first patients are expected to be recruited in the new year.

Researchers from King’s College London are hopeful more than 200 children will eventually be able to take part in the study, with results expected in around four years. Some may continue using the drugs after the trial if it is deemed “clinically appropriate.”

More than half of the children will be injected with hormone-suppressing medication. This will pause the physical changes that come with puberty, such as facial hair, periods, and breasts.

Some children with gender dysphoria who took part in a trial of puberty blocker drugs may continue to use the drugs after the study ends, despite them being banned from treating under-18s in the UK, researchers have said.

The team will also use the scans to assess whether the drugs affect brain development as part of a separate analysis to be launched on Saturday.

Both studies form part of the wider Pathways research programme, which aims to find out how the NHS can support children participating in gender services.

Plans for a trial of puberty blockers were announced following the publication of the Cass Review in 2024; this article concluded that the quality of studies claiming to show the benefits of such medications for teenagers with gender dysphoria was “poor”.

The drugs are no longer prescribed to children on the NHS to treat gender dysphoria after the 2024 ban was made permanent last December.

The trial has now launched and is expected to enroll 226 young people.

Researchers are working with clinical services to develop a process for patients to provide informed consent as well as psychological and social care.

Lead researcher Emily Simonoff, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at KCL’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), said: “We expect the first group of young people who have experienced all of this and who have been reviewed and confirmed as clinically appropriate by the national multidisciplinary team to be ready for recruitment early in the new year.”

The youngest patients would generally be 10 to 11 years old in girls and 11 to 12 years old in boys, making the maximum age of consent 15 years and 11 months, the researchers said.

One group will be given puberty blockers for two years, and the other will be given drugs with a one-year delay.

Both groups will be followed for two years and will have information about when the drug should be given.

Prof Simonoff said: “By the end of two years, about half of young people will have had puberty-suppressing hormones for a year, and half will have had puberty-suppressing hormones for two years.

“This also allows us to explore additional interesting questions, such as whether the length of time puberty suppression is applied leads to incremental effects, if any.

“At the end of the trial, each young person will be examined individually and clinically to look at their ongoing care needs, which may include continuing puberty-suppressing hormones if deemed clinically appropriate for them.”

Prof Simonoff said the consideration of creating a 12-month delay group depended on when researchers would realistically expect to see evidence of both benefits and possible risks and harms.

He added: “But of course we’ll see if young people and their parents change their minds.”

To participate in the study, children must have reached puberty and be diagnosed with gender nonconformity (meaning they feel incongruent between their gender and their sex at birth).

Along with these feelings, they must have a “persistent desire” to take puberty blockers after psychological care.

Parents or guardians of patients should also support the option of using puberty blockers. Researchers expect to see about five to six children recruited per month.

“This is based on the number of young people we expect to see across different services each month,” Prof Simonoff said. According to the researchers, findings from the experiment will last “at least” four years.

Puberty blockers are usually given as injections, the most common being triptorelin and usually administered every six months. The drugs were first licensed in the 1980s to treat early puberty, which occurs before the age of eight in girls and nine in boys.

According to the NHS, the average age at which girls start puberty is 11 and for boys it is 12. Prof Simonoff said the drugs had a “good safety profile” when used to delay early puberty, but concerns had been raised about their use to treat gender non-conformity.

This includes the potential impact on bone health, possible effects on fertility, and possible effects on brain development.

The second study launched is called Pathways Connect and will look at the brain development of young people who use puberty blockers and those who do not.

It is hoped that the research will shed light on whether puberty suppression affects brain development.

Approximately 250 young people are expected to attend; of these, approximately 150 are from clinical trials of puberty blockers and 100 are from accessing non-medical gender care.

Prof Simonoff said: “We know that adolescence is a period of rapid brain development and new thinking abilities, and people have raised the theoretical risk that interfering with puberty during this important period could affect brain development and cognition.

“There’s been quite a bit of work in this area. We’ll be pairing brain imaging findings with findings on everyday cognitive tasks and testing done every day in the clinic, so we can understand what the relationship is between any changes in brain development.”

The Pathways research program is led by KCL and jointly supported by King’s College London and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

Other studies include Pathways Horizon, a longitudinal study of all young people who attend and wish to participate in NHS children and young people’s gender services.

The mental and physical health of young people covered by these services will be monitored as they grow.

Meanwhile, Pathways Voices will cover the experiences of children and young people living with gender nonconforming and their care in the NHS.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Young people with gender non-conforming need to access high quality, safe and effective care. We are following the Cass Review which made clear that evidence on the care of these children is lacking and we have proposed this research to help deliver this.”

“Medical care must always be based on solid evidence and the safety of children must come first.”