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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   27237 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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In humans the best we have seems to be this study in which a 3-year course of puberty blockers in girls with precocious puberty is associated with a 7-point reduction in IQ from what they scored before beginning the puberty blockers.

I think that would be hard to disentangle from "are there associated problems with precocious puberty that affect the brain?" since presumably the IQ tests happened before the precocious puberty set in which is when the puberty blockers would be needed. I think that if the wiring for when puberty should begin is so mistimed, it wouldn't be surprising if other problems came to the fore as well.

If the cause can be traced to the hypothalamus or pituitary, the cause is considered central. Other names for this type are complete or true precocious puberty.

Causes of central precocious puberty can include:

  • hypothalamic hamartoma produces pulsatile gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH)
  • Langerhans cell histiocytosis
  • McCune–Albright syndrome

Central precocious puberty can also be caused by brain tumors, infection (most commonly tuberculous meningitis, especially in developing countries), trauma, hydrocephalus, and Angelman syndrome. Precocious puberty is associated with advancement in bone age, which leads to early fusion of epiphyses, thus resulting in reduced final height and short stature.

Those sorts of concerns are why I emphasized the sheep RCT more despite it being in sheep. Unfortunately this is the state of the evidence regarding puberty blockers.

Though regarding your specific suggestion the IQ test was conducted as part of the puberty-blockers study, so they would already have some symptoms of precocious puberty. The study actually speculates that the early puberty was boosting performance relative to other children the same age and the drop was the result of stopping it (which is itself a concerning idea regarding using puberty blockers to stop puberty entirely):

The results on IQ measurements in children with precocious puberty showed elevated scores, with higher verbal than performance scores, and this was interpreted as a possible effect of sex steroids, especially on the left hemisphere (4, 30). The initial total IQ score in this group was not different from normal—comparable with the data of Xhrouet-Heinrichs et al. (4)—and a decrease of about 7 points was observed during the treatment period. Although significant, doubts exist about the clinical relevance of this decrease. One hypothesis for the decrease in verbal IQ scores is that withdrawal of exposure of the brain to sex steroids brings the child back into a more age-appropriate IQ range. The lower verbal scores in this group, which was in contrast to results in girls with central precocious puberty, could be explained by the adoption status of the children; as in other children from foreign backgrounds, it is known that verbal intelligence is lower than in children born in their own country. In primary school, mathematics, which is part of verbal IQ, was problematic in adopted children, especially in boys. The authors concluded that a deficient development of visual–spatial organization and, to a lesser extent, poorer concentration, may be due to the lower achievements in mathematics rather than to intelligence or fluency.

Who knows if this is meaningful at all though, it's speculative and sounds pretty dubious to me.

It's hard to know, since clearly suffering from precocious puberty means a problem with the entire system so the effects of that on the brain are going to be hard to tease out from "and then we put them on blockers".

How well sheep studies relate to humans is also hard to know, who was the last sheep to attend Harvard?

The study actually speculates that the early puberty was boosting performance relative to other children the same age

I can definitely tell you this is true, girls get their puberty relatively earlier than their age-peer boys and act/behave more mature, from that you get more conscientiousness and a whole slew of other brain alterations.

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