Trans Women Are Three Times As Likely To Die, Landmark Study Finds

Trans women are nearly three times as likely to die as cisgender women, a landmark study has found.

The study published in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal earlier this week found that trans women are especially susceptible to deaths from heart disease, lung cancer, HIV-related illness and suicide.

Overall, the study found that trans people are twice as likely to die as cisgender people. The study is based on the medical records of around 3,000 trans women and 1,600 trans men at the Amsterdam University Medical Center, which treats around 90% of trans people in the Netherlands.

However, because just over 90% of the trans people whose medical records were analysed for the study are white, its findings may be more limited than they initially appear. It is well known, for example, that trans women of colour face a much higher risk of violence and murder.

The study did uncover some slightly more positive findings, too. Christel de Blok, its first author, told Forbes that the majority of deaths related to HIV happened in the first couple of decades of the study, which is based on medical records from 1972 to 2018.

According to de Blok, this suggests that "greater social acceptance and access to support, and improved treatments for HIV, may have played an important role in reducing deaths related to these causes among transgender people in recent years".

In her new book The Transgender Issue, writer and campaigner Shon Faye outlines the various interlocking failures which have led to a trans healthcare crisis in the UK. She also proposes several eminently sensible measures to improve the treatment that trans people can access. You can read our recent interview with Shon Faye here.