Jacob Simmering

Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine

University of Iowa

Jacob Simmering is an assistant professor in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Occupational Medicine at the University of Iowa. My graduate school training was a mixture of epidemiology, health economics, and statistical methods and current areas of active research include the effects of the environment, especially weather and pollution, on health outcomes and pharmacoepidemiology and neurodegenerative diseases.

My non-research interests include wondering about the effects of the built environment in cities, biking, reading, his toddler, doomscrolling on Twitter, and saying that I’ll someday learn Julia.

Interests

Administrative health care data
Environmental effects on health
Neurodegenerative diseases
Putting more miles on his bike than car

Education

PhD in Health Services Research, 2016
University of Iowa College of Pharmacy
MS in Epidemiology, 2009
University of Iowa College of Public Health
BA in Chemistry, 2009
Grinnell College

Featured Publications

Jacob Simmering, Michael J Welsh, Jordan Schultz, Nandakumar S Narayanan

April 2022

Use of Glycolysis Enhancing Drugs has Less Risk of Parkinson's Disease than 5α-reductase Inhibitors

Background: Terazosin and closely related α1-adrenergic receptor antagonists (doxazosin and alfuzosin; TZ/DZ/AZ) enhance glycolysis and reduce neurodeneration in animal models. Observational evidence in humans from several databases support this finding; however, a recent study has suggested that tamsulosin, the comparator medication, increases risk of Parkinson’s disease. We consider a different comparison group of men taking the 5α-reductase inhibitors as a new, independent comparison allowing us to both obtain new estimates of the association between TZ/DZ/AZ and Parkinson’s disease outcomes and validate tamsulosin as an active comparator.

Methods: Using the Truven Health Analytics Marketscan database, we identified men without Parkinson’s disease, newly started on TZ/DZ/AZ, tamsulosin, or 5α-reductase inhibitors. We followed these matched cohorts to compare the hazard of developing Parkinson’s disease.

Results: We found that men taking TZ/DZ/AZ had a lower hazard of Parkinson’s disease than men taking tamsulosin (HR=0.72, 95% CI: 0.66-0.78, n=239,946) and lower than men taking a 5α-reductase inhibitors (HR=0.81, 95% CI: 0.72-0.92, n=129,320). The hazard for men taking tamsulosin was not statistically significantly different than for men taking 5α-reductase inhibitors (HR=1.10, 95% CI: 1.00-1.22, n=157,490).

Conclusions: These data suggest that men using TZ/DZ/AZ have a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease than those using tamsulosin or 5α-reductase inhibitors while users of tamsulosin and 5α-reductase inhibitors have relatively similar survival functions.

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