Conversion therapy could be raising youths' blood pressure

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-05-07 01:00

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Conversion therapy - where youths are encouraged to 'change' their sexual orientation and gender identity - is linked to higher blood pressure and inflammation, new research finds. The link was still strong even when the researchers accounted for a range of factors like demographic, health behaviors, and HIV status. Most of the 72 study participants who had been exposed to conversion therapy said the experience affected them very negatively, so the researchers suspect the blood pressure increase has something to do with cortisol, the stress hormone.

Journal/
conference: JAMA Network Open

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Northwestern University, USA

Funder: The RADAR cohort is funded by grant U01DA036939 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Dr Mustanski, principal investigator) with additional support provided by the Viral Pathogenesis Core of the Third Coast Center for AIDS Research, an NIH-funded center (Drs Mustanski and D’Aquila, principal investigators). Mr Gibb is supported by grant 181602 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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