$5.1 Million: NIH Funded Research on How Cross-Sex Hormone Therapy Affects Transgender Patients. DOGE Ended It.

The NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute funded a multi-year R01 grant studying the cardiovascular and cardiometabolic effects of gender-affirming hormone therapy in transgender adults. Cross-sex hormone therapy — testosterone for transgender men, estrogen and androgen blockers for transgender women — is prescribed to approximately 300,000 Americans and is associated with changes in lipid profiles, blood pressure, body composition, and cardiovascular risk. The Endocrine Society has published clinical practice guidelines for hormone therapy since 2009; this NIH research was designed to generate the long-term outcomes data those guidelines lack.

The research is medically consequential because cross-sex hormone therapy is already widely prescribed. Whether the hormones are prescribed to transgender patients or not is a political question; whether they have cardiovascular consequences is a medical question. The DOGE position is that NIH should not fund research into a practice the Trump administration opposes. The medical position is that 300,000 Americans currently take these hormones, and the absence of long-term safety data harms them regardless of political views on transgender identity.