an Endocrine Society Thematic Issue
Read our special collection of journal articles, published in 2020–2021, focused on transgender health and medicine! Curation of the collection was guided by Altmetric Attention Scores and subject relevance.
In Journal of the Endocrine Society, Baker and colleagues surveyed studies that had at least three months of follow-up and assessed mental health and quality of life among transgender people receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy. They found an association between hormone therapy and increased quality of life and decreased anxiety and depression, although the authors noted some limitations of the studies and could draw no conclusions about death by suicide. Lee and colleagues examined bone mineral density in transgender youth in early puberty who were initiating puberty-suppressing gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist (GnRHa) treatment; they found bone mineral density lower than reference standards in those designated male and those designated female at birth, which might be explained by low levels of physical activity and suboptimal calcium intake.
Still in Journal of the Endocrine Society, an Expert Endocrine Consult article by Maheshwari and associates offers a stepwise approach to identifying the cause of the non-suppressed level of testosterone seen in up to a quarter of trans women undergoing gender-affirming feminizing hormone treatment. Lastly, Dwyer and Greenspan provide a position statement of the Endocrine Nurses Society that includes recommendations for healthcare providers and organizations seeking to embrace a gender-affirming approach to care and to increase access to such care for transgender and gender diverse people.
In Endocrinology, Esparza and coauthors report on basic research that could be relevant to treatment of trans men. They investigated the effects of androgens in the normal male range and operating via the androgen receptor on luteinizing hormone secretion in female mice, as well as the effects on females’ pituitary cells. They find that in normal adult females, male levels of androgens strongly inhibit the reproductive axis at both neural and pituitary levels.
In JCEM, Walch and coauthors provide an Endocrine Society Policy Perspective on the proper care of transgender and gender diverse person in the setting of proposed discrimination. They affirm the principles of providing safe and effective gender-affirming interventions in the context of pending and future legislation that would discriminate against transgender and gender-diverse persons, while stressing the need for science and health care experts to inform policies. Kozato et al. report that they observed no significant risk of venous thromboembolism in a large cohort of transgender and gender nonbinary female patients undergoing gender-affirming surgery independent of whether hormone treatment was suspended prior to surgery. Wamboldt and colleagues describe successful induction of lactation in a transwoman by hormonal augmentation, and Schagen and coauthors find that in trans boys and girls, bone mineral area density z-scores decreased during GnRHa treatment and increased during gender-affirming hormone treatment; however, transgirls had low z-scores at baseline and after 3 years of estrogen treatment.
In Endocrine Reviews, Handelsman provides a wide-ranging survey of androgen misuse and abuse, noting however that pharmacological androgen treatment is a “widely adopted standard” in female-to-male transgender treatment and pointing out the occasional side effect of truncal acne. And Bhargava and coauthors provide an Endocrine Society Scientific Statement on Considering Sex as a Biological Variable in Basic and Clinical Research, in which they emphasize the differences between the concepts of sex and gender, then discuss mechanisms of differentiation along both of these axes and assess their significance for different types of research.
Published: August 2021
It can be difficult to keep up to date in the rapidly evolving and expanding world of endocrine science. We curate topical collections of research from across our journals, Endocrine Reviews, Endocrinology, Journal of the Endocrine Society, and The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, so that you can easily find and read recent, influential articles on the topics that interest you.
Selection in each Thematic Issue is guided by online metrics, including Altmetric Attention Scores, Featured Article designations, and identification of leading authors and key topics. Each month, we publish a new Thematic Issue online and work to highlight and promote endocrine science in the press, through email, on social media and across other distribution channels.
Join our endocrine community and become a member! Only members receive access to a variety of member benefits that will enhance your career. If your membership has lapsed, rejoin today so that you can continue to receive your membership benefits.
We provide our journal authors with a variety of resources for increasing the discoverability and citation of their published work. Use these tools and tips to broaden the impact of your article.