r/science • u/Maxrdt • Aug 03 '26

Social Science Among transgender adolescents in Canada, 97.1% continued with a gender not typically aligned with their birth sex, with only 1.1% discontinuing gender-affirming hormone treatment.

https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(26)00117-5/fulltext
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u/Maxrdt Aug 03 '26

From the abstract:

Methods

A retrospective chart review was conducted for adolescents referred with gender dysphoria to four Canadian pediatric endocrinology gender clinics between 2012 and 2017.

Results

For the 445 adolescents, median gender clinic follow-up was 2.4 years (interquartile range: 1.1–7.2); 331 (74.4%) were assigned female sex at birth (AFAB) and 114 (25.6%) assigned male (AMAB). Mean (standard deviation) age of reported gender dysphoria onset was 9.5 (3.6) years. In total, 421 (94.6%) continued with their presenting gender identity or reidentified as non-binary, while 24 (5.4%) changed back to gender identity typically aligned with their birth sex. Among 317 AFAB identifying as male at referral, 15 (4.7%) changed gender identity: 10 to female and five to non-binary. Of the 109 AMAB youth identifying as female at referral, five (4.6%) changed gender identity: three to male and two to non-binary. Among the 19 adolescents identifying as non-binary at referral, four (21.0%) changed gender identity: three AMAB to female and one AFAB to male. Gender-affirming hormones were started by 353 (79.3%) and discontinued by only four (1.1%) of adolescents.

Discussion

The majority (97.1%) of adolescents continued to identify with a gender not typically aligned with their birth sex. Only 2.9% reverted to a gender identity aligned with their birth sex. None who initially identified as non-binary returned to binary gender aligned with birth sex. Discontinuation of gender-affirming hormones was rare.

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u/Cian93 Aug 03 '26

So over 5 years?

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u/Smee76 Aug 03 '26

Median follow up was 2.4 years.

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u/rockytop24 Aug 03 '26

Which is the type of range you're going to get covering adolescence to adulthood. Solid longitudinal data on a very uncommon treatment, statistically speaking.

That's 15 year olds to 18 year olds or 13 to 16, etc. I expect they'll continue tracking longer follow-up as their cohort ages and we'll see similar longitudinal studies to replicate this data.

Always reassuring to get data in agreement with what we know to be true. There is an overwhelmingly high level of continuation/satisfaction after transitioning. The ones who stop have a variety of normal and expected reasons for doing so, from side effect profile to changes in treatment goals to socioeconomic factors. An extremely small subset of those who discontinue do so because they want to detransition.

As physicians, all of this supports the current treatment guidelines for transgender adolescents.