Thyroxine medicine

[Petina]

I just read this article that says that women who take thyroxine medicine are more likely to have homosexual children, is this true?? Here is the link to the article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1478256/Pregnant-women-who-take-slimming-pills-are-more-likely-to-have-gay-children.html



This discussion is related to 23wks pregnant high tsh .

[magpieannie]

Thanks Red! You're GREAT! -My daughter will be pregnant someday in the future and she will most certainly have to take her thyroid meds during pregnancy as she has no gland--so this is not somethiong that we want to be concerned about on top of everythinhg else! Thanks for the post, my thoughts totally!

[redheadaussie]

Oh for crying out loud! Sorry but this one takes the cake for me! I have heard a ton about how thyroid meds causing this that and the other thing, but seriously?????
  Many many research results are paid by companies to get the results they want to hear.
Sorry, but last I heard breathing fresh air caused cancer.....let's not focus too hard on this kind of thing.

[magpieannie]

My daughter was born without a thyroid gland and she is 10 now and normal in everyway. I would not think that supplying a hypothyroid mother enough t4 med during pregnancy to get adequite amounts to the baby for proper development would cause any issue like this. Makes no sense! Gimel's idea would make a little more sense to me with the cerebral blood flow effects of too little available thyroid reaching the brain in utero, but still not likely to be the cause for someone to be a homosexual later in life. Maybe the issue is not the t4 but the lack of t3 as I have read an interesting study from Dr. Lowe about the need for t3 to be kept higher during pregnancy? Anyway, as of 10 years of age, my daughter shows no signs of being a homosexual, and I look for her to be a heterosexual mother someday married to a wonderful supportive man with children of her own that will have working thyroid glands!

[gimel]

Sally made some very good points.  When I read the article, I did not see any conclusion that it was a cause and effect relationship.  

"The researchers found that the mothers of homosexual women were at least five times more likely to have taken synthetic thyroid medications during pregnancy than mothers of heterosexual women, and eight times more likely to have used amphetamine-based diet pills such as Dexedrine and diethylpropion.

I did not read this as concluding that taking thyroxine was the cause. If they stated that, then I have overlooked it.  When you think about it, couldn't it be that these mothers were suffering from being hypothyroid, and logically taking thyroxine.  Could the effects of hypothyroidism ( low metabolism, reduced cerebral blood flow, etc.) be the potential cause, not the thyroxine?

[Super_sally888]

I read the article.

It says that women who took thyroid meds during early pregnancy were 5 x more likely to have lesbian daughter than women who didn't take thyroid meds.

It also said that women who took ampetamine type slimming pills during early pregnancy were 8x more likely to have lesbian daughters than women who didn't take these pills.

It concluded that certain drugs do affect sexual orientation of particularly female babies early in pregnancy and advised that women shouldn't take slimming medications in early pregnancy.  It also advised that the sample population was small and much more research is needed.

First - of course women shouldn't take slimming meds during pregnancy!

Second - It appears that they didn't look at whether the thyroid meds were used to treat hypothyroid or if they were used for weight loss.  I imagine that the benefit of taking thyroid meds if you are hypothyroid (considering that you probably can't get pregnant and may die without them, and may seriously affect the mental development of the baby) far outweighs any risk for homosexuality in female infants.

Please don't use this observational study as a reason not to take your thyroid meds if you need it.