Endocrine Abstracts

Background/Aims

Gender affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) has been reported to have positive psychosocial effects on transgender people. In present study, we aimed to investigate longitudinally the short-term and long-term impacts on social adaptation, body image, features of alexithymia and aggression changes in transgender men after GAHT administration.

Methods

The single center, longitudinally follow-up study included transgender men who had admitted to the Endocrinology and Metabolism outpatient clinic of Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa, Cerrahpasa Medical School. Thirty-nine transgender men were asked to complete the Social Adaptation Self-Evaluation Scale (SASS), the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Body Image Scale (BIS), and the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BAQ) both before GAHT, and after 12 months of GAHT administration. GAHT involves the administration of intramuscular injections of either 250 mg of testosterone esters depot every 3 weeks, or 1000 mg of testosterone undecanoate every 12 weeks.

Results

In the first year of hormone therapy, there was no significant change in terms of social adaptation according to SASS (44.8 ± 6.4 vs 43.7 ± 6.3, P = 0.261). Although the body images scores of transgender men measured by BIS were in the borderline of statistical significance, they increased after GAHT compared to baseline (139 ± 27.9 vs 148.1 ± 26.5, P = 0.058). When transgender men were evaluated in terms of alexithymia, while it became more difficult for individuals to identifying feelings (P = 0.039) after GAHT, there is no difference emerged in terms of difficulty describing feelings (P = 0.797) and externally-oriented thinking (P = 0.522). On the other hand, there was no change in aggressive behavior after GAHT according to the BAQ total and subscales (physical aggression, verbal aggression, hostility and anger) (P > 0.05 for all).

Conclusions

Our findings indicate that GAHT causes transgender men to perceive their body images more positively, and has no effect on their social adaptation and aggressive behavior. On the other hand, GAHT may ended up with more alexithymic scores in transgender men population.

Keywords: social adaptation, body image, alexithymia, aggressive behaviors, gender affirming hormone therapy.