Jonathan Gelfond

University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio | UT HSC · Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Introduction The discovery of biogenic aldehydes in the postmortem parkinsonian brain and the ability of these aldehydes to modify and cross‐link proteins has called attention to their possible role in Parkinson's disease. For example, many in vitro studies have found that the aldehyde metabolite of dopamine, 3,4‐dihydroxyphenylacetaldehyde (DOPAL)...

Sex differences in aging and longevity have been widely observed, with females consistently outliving males across human populations. However, the mechanisms driving these disparities remain poorly understood. In this study, we explored the influence of post-pubertal testicular effects on sex differences in aging by prepubertally castrating genetic...

Background: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is an age-related, chronic, irreversible fibrotic lung disease. IPF is associated with increased senescent cells burden, which may be alleviated with administration of senescent cell targeting drugs termed 'senolytics'. We previously conducted an open-label single-arm pilot study of the senolytic com...

Competing risks survival data in the presence of partially masked causes are frequently encountered in medical research or clinical trials. When longitudinal biomarkers are also available, it is of great clinical importance to examine associations between the longitudinal biomarkers and the cause‐specific survival outcomes. In this article, we prop...

Mice bred in 2017 and entered into the C2017 cohort were tested for possible lifespan benefits of (R/S)‐1,3‐butanediol (BD), captopril (Capt), leucine (Leu), the Nrf2‐activating botanical mixture PB125, sulindac, syringaresinol, or the combination of rapamycin and acarbose started at 9 or 16 months of age (RaAc9, RaAc16). In male mice, the combinat...

Background: Studies in cell cultures and rodents suggest that toll-like receptor (TLR)4 is involved in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance, but direct data in humans are limited. We tested the hypothesis that pharmacologic blockade of TLR4 with the competitive inhibitor eritoran would improve insulin resistance in humans. Methods: In Protocol...

Introduction: The morbidity and mortality of the COVID-19 pandemic have disproportionately burdened Hispanic populations in the United States. While health equity research is typically conducted in populations where Hispanics are the minority, this project analyzes COVID-19 racioethnic transmission trends over the first 6 months of the pandemic wi...

Background: Asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infections may play a significant role in the spread of COVID-19 but determining prevalence of these infections in the general population is labor intensive. Purpose: This approach describes an innovative surveillance strategy using teams of medical students and emergency medical technicians (EMTs). Me...

e19083 Background: Previous studies have demonstrated racial disparities in MPN outcomes, but there is no data regarding impact of race on outcomes of HCT in MPN. This is a retrospective study evaluating transplant related outcomes in Hispanics undergoing allogeneic HCT for MPN/MF in a large hospital in South Texas. Methods: A total of 45 patients...

Objectives: Culinary education may be one way to improve children's eating behaviors. We formatively evaluated the effect of a hands-on afterschool 12-module, registered dietitian-led culinary education program on healthy eating behaviors in a predominately Hispanic/Latino, low-socioeconomic community. Methods: Of 234 children participating in t...

Background: A recently reported phase III randomized trial comparing open and minimally invasive hysterectomy showed significantly higher rates of local recurrence after minimally invasive surgery (MIS) for cervical cancer. This raised concerns regarding patterns of recurrences and survival after MIS in general. This study aims to determine the ef...

Hispanic family caregivers of people with dementia experience higher levels of stress compared to non‐Hispanic white caregivers. Long‐term stress causes depression, caregiver burden, cellular aging, and dysregulation of the immune, nervous, and endocrine systems. The purpose of this study was to determine the validity of the Spanish version of the...

I am presenting a poster and a rapid-fire abstract at the 2022 Advancing the Science of Cancer in Latinos conference (register at https://www.uthscsa.edu/academics/medicine/education/cme/ascl) regarding the interaction between social determinants of health and ethnicity on gastric cancer risk. Come and see!

Background Mutations in several common hereditary cancer genes are associated with prostate cancer, but there is limited information on the prevalence of these mutations in Hispanic men. Methods We selected men at high risk for genetic mutations from 1,515 Hispanic men enrolled in the San Antonio Biomarkers of Risk for prostate cancer (SABOR) coho...

Background: In the last four years, six regimens were approved by the Food and Drug Association as second-line therapies for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, there are significant differences between real-world and clinical trial populations. We analyzed survival and toxicities among second-line therapies for HCC in our population...

Background: Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) rates have dramatically increased. Breastfeeding is a nonpharmacologic intervention that may be beneficial, reducing NAS symptom severity, and thus, need for and duration of pharmacological treatment and length of hospital stay. Objectives: Conduct meta-analysis to determine whether breastfeeding re...

With evolving cores, enrichment and training programs, and supported research projects, the San Antonio (SA) Nathan Shock Center has for 26 years provided critical support to investigators locally, nationally, and abroad. With its existing and growing intellectual capital, the SA Nathan Shock Center provides to local and external investigators an e...

Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is a frontline treatment for prostate cancer but induces profound cognitive impairment in more than half of patients. This significantly reduces quality of life for cancer survivors and their families. Deficits occur in cognitive domains associated with function of the hippocampus (Hipp) and medial prefrontal cort...

Objective The objective of this study was to investigate and compare the effectiveness of several toothpastes containing nanohydroxyapatite (nano-HAP) to relieve dentin hypersensitivity (DHS) with that of a commercial desensitizing dentifrice containing calcium sodium phosphosilicate (CSPS). Materials and methods In this double-blind, randomized,...

Background Older adults with Type 2 diabetes (T2D) are more likely to be frail, which increases the risk for disability and mortality.Objectives To determine the feasibility of a behavioral lifestyle intervention, enhanced with mobile health technology for self-monitoring of diet and activity, to improve frailty in overweight/obese older adults (≥6...

Background Although intravesical BCG is the standard treatment of high-grade non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC), response rates remain unsatisfactory. In preclinical models, rapamycin enhances BCG vaccine efficacy against tuberculosis and the killing capacity of γδ T cells, which are critical for BCG’s antitumor effects. Here, we monitored...

p>Introduction: Patients with TNBC breast cancer have inferior treatment outcomes compared to other breast cancer subtypes and targeted therapies are lacking. S-equol is a novel oral Estrogen Receptor (ER) Beta agonist with preclinical data showing suppression of TNBC cellular proliferation, and recently presented data showed a decrease in Ki-67 in...

271 Background: Within the last 4 years, the FDA approved five drugs as second-line therapies for advanced HCC. At our cancer center, the majority of our patients are Hispanic with varying liver dysfunction, and this real world population is not represented in registration trials of TKIs and IOs. Therefore, we analyzed survival and toxicities among...

Active telomerase is essential for stem cells and most cancers to maintain telomeres. The enzymatic activity of telomerase is related but not equivalent to the expression of TERT, the catalytic subunit of the complex. Here we show that telomerase enzymatic activity can be robustly estimated from the expression of a 13-gene signature. We demonstrate...

Purpose To evaluate factors associated with radical cystectomy (RC) refusal, subsequent treatment decisions, and their influence on overall survival (OS). Materials and methods We queried the National Cancer Database for patients with non-metastatic muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), cT2-T4M0. Patients who refused recommended RC were further s...

Background and objectives: Postpyloric feeding tube placement is a time-consuming procedure associated with multiple attempts and radiation exposure. Our objective with this study is to compare the time, attempts, and radiation exposure using the electromagnetic versus blind method to place a postpyloric feeding tube in critically ill children. Ou...

This research is motivated from the data from a large Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT). The prostate specific antigens (PSAs) were collected longitudinally, and the survival endpoint was the time to low-grade cancer or the time to high-grade cancer (competing risks). In this article, the goal is to model the longitudinal PSA...

p>First-line treatment for prostate cancer includes androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). However, this intervention can induce severe cognitive impairments in more than half of patients and increases the likelihood of dementia or Alzheimer9s disease. Long-term occurrence of these impairments can significantly reduce quality of life for cancer surviv...

Elevated body mass index (BMI) is a global health problem, leading to enhanced mortality and the increased risk of several cancers including essential thrombocythemia (ET), a subtype of the Philadelphia-chromosome negative myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN). Furthermore, evidence states that BMI is associated with the severity of symptom burden amo...

The emphasis on team science in clinical and translational research increases the importance of collaborative biostatisticians (CBs) in healthcare. Adequate training and development of CBs ensure appropriate conduct of robust and meaningful research and, therefore, should be considered as a high-priority focus for biostatistics groups. Comprehensiv...

Background Doubly robust estimation produces an unbiased estimator for the average treatment effect unless both propensity score (PS) and outcome models are incorrectly specified. Studies have shown that the doubly robust estimator is subject to more bias than the standard weighting estimator when both PS and outcome models are incorrectly specifie...

Exercise provides a robust physiological stimulus that evokes cross-talk among multiple tissues that when repeated regularly (i.e., training) improves physiological capacity, benefits numerous organ systems, and decreases the risk for premature mortality. However, a gap remains in identifying the detailed molecular signals induced by exercise that...

560 Background: Patients with TNBC breast cancer have inferior treatment outcomes compared to other breast cancer subtypes and targeted therapies are lacking. S-equol is a novel oral Estrogen Receptor (ER) Beta agonist with preclinical data showing suppression of TNBC cellular proliferation. We therefore conducted an early phase window of opportuni...

The purpose of this study is to determine if the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) screening guideline for osteoporosis identifies women under the age of 65 with osteoporosis needing bone mineral density (BMD) testing. If the FRAX tool fails to identify women under the age of 65 with undiagnosed osteoporosis, diagnosis and treat...

Background: Obesity and diabetes mellitus are directly implicated in many adverse health consequences in adults as well as in the offspring of obese and diabetic mothers. Hispanic Americans are particularly at risk for obesity, diabetes, and end-stage renal disease. Maternal obesity and/or diabetes through prenatal programming may alter the fetal...

Mammalian aging is associated with reduced tissue regeneration and loss of physiological integrity. With age, stem cells diminish in their ability to regenerate adult tissues, likely contributing to age-related morbidity. Thus, we replaced aged hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) with young-donor HSCs using a novel mobilization-enabled hematopoietic st...

Background Growth recovery lines are radiodense lines in long bones reported to be indicators of stress. Objective The purpose of this study was to understand the distribution, quantity and associations of growth recovery lines in children ages 0–24 months with high and low risk for child maltreatment. Materials and methods We conducted a retrosp...

Many computational methods have been developed to discern intratumor heterogeneity (ITH) using DNA sequence data from bulk tumor samples. These methods share an assumption that two mutations arise from the same subclone if they have similar mutant allele-frequencies (MAFs), and thus it is difficult or impossible to distinguish two subclones with si...

Purpose To assess the effect of assisted hatching (AH) on live birth rate (LBR) in first cycle, fresh in vitro fertilization (IVF) in good and poor prognosis patients. Methods Retrospective cohort using cycles reported to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology Clinic Outcomes Reporting System. Live birth rate was compared in women who un...

Background: Quality of life (QOL) is predictive of survival in many malignancy types, including myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs; Scherber 2017, Sloan 2012, Montazeri 2009, Nilsson 2017). We have previously characterized that an association exists between symptom burden and QOL among MPN patients, but due to the disease specificity of symptoms, s...

Rationale Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is an effective treatment for prostate cancer, but induces profound cognitive impairment. Little research has addressed mechanisms underlying these deficits or potential treatments. This is an unmet need to improve quality of life for prostate cancer survivors. Objectives We investigated mechanisms of c...

Background: The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between immediate post-surgical flap position and subsequent probing depth measurements following osseous surgery. Methods: Twenty-four patients treatment planned for osseous surgery after completion of initial therapy and re-evaluation were enrolled. Pressure molded stents wer...

Introduction BMI increases the risk of Philadelphia-chromosome negative myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) development. Patients with MPN often suffer from a severe symptom burden reduced quality of life. The aim of this study was to examine the association between BMI and symptom burden. Methods A comprehensive analysis of data from two large cros...

Introduction: As cancer center funds are allocated toward several resources, clinical trial offices and the clinical trial infrastructure is constantly scrutinized. It has been shown that 20% of clinical trials fail to achieve their accrual goal and in an institutional level several trials are open with poor accrual. We sought to identify factors...

Introduction BMI increases the risk of Philadelphia-chromosome negative myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) development. Patients with MPN often suffer from a severe symptom burden reduced quality of life. The aim of this study was to examine the association between BMI and symptom burden. Methods A comprehensive analysis of data from two large cros...

We compared four propensity score (PS) methods using simulations: maximum likelihood (ML), generalized boosting models (GBM), covariate balancing propensity scores (CBPS), and generalized additive models (GAM). Although these methods have been shown to perform better than the ML in estimating causal treatment effects, no comparison has been conduct...

To study the association of nutrient intake measured by baseline food frequency questionnaire and risk of subsequent prostate cancer (PCa) in the SABOR (San Antonio Biomarkers of Risk) cohort study. After IRB approval, more than 1903 men enrolled in a prospective cohort from 2000 to 2010 as part of the SABOR clinical validation site for the Nationa...

Purpose The number of in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles is increasing and the majority of patients undergoing IVF pay out of pocket. Reproductive endocrinology and infertility practitioners employ different business models to help create financial pathways for patients needing IVF but details regarding the different types of business models being...

The female survival advantage is a robust characteristic of human longevity. However, underlying mechanisms are not understood, and rodent models exhibiting a female advantage are lacking. Here, we report that the genetically heterogeneous (UM‐HET3) mice used by the National Institute on Aging Interventions Testing Program (ITP) are such a model. A...

Aim This 5 years retrospective cohort survival study compared failure rates of dental implants placed in HIV (+) and HIV (‐) patients relative to several risk factors. Materials and Methods Between 2006 and 2015, 484 implants placed in HIV (+) patients and 805 implants placed in HIV (‐) patients, were assessed for survival. The effects of HIV were...

To follow‐up on our previous report that acarbose (ACA), a drug that blocks postprandial glucose spikes, increases mouse lifespan, we studied ACA at three doses: 400, 1,000 (the original dose), and 2,500 ppm, using genetically heterogeneous mice at three sites. Each dose led to a significant change (by log‐rank test) in both sexes, with larger effe...

To gain insight into the potential mechanisms driving sarcopenia and the adaptive response to exercise, we conducted deep sequencing on vastus lateralis muscle obtained from healthy, younger and older subjects before and after a 4 month endurance training program. Muscle from women had 7 miRNAs and men had 8 miRNAs that changed with age and were re...

Background: Finasteride, a 5-alpha reductase inhibitor may have effects on biomarkers such as prostate-specific antigen (PSA) that could be leveraged to improve screening. Objective: To determine the predictive characteristics of biomarkers for prostate cancer for cancer on biopsy following 3 months of finasteride use compared with placebo. Des...

CONSORT 2010 Checklist. (DOC)

Finasteride challenge protocol developed in 2010 utilized in current study. (DOC)

Developed from the finasteride challenge study. (XLS)

Adverse events stratified by treatment. A patient may have had a specific event more than once. (DOCX)

PurposeLocation of the primary tumor is prognostic and predictive of efficacy with VEGF-inhibitors (I) versus EGFR-I given first-line to metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) patients. However, little is known regarding the effect of location on prognosis and prediction in refractory mCRC. We assessed the efficacy of VEGF-I and EGFR-I in regards to l...

Objective The study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of Apadent Pro (Sangi) Nanohydroxyapatite (nHAP) dental cream to relieve Dentin Hypersensitivity (DHS), compared with a positive control cream containing 20% pure silica (Silica). Methods In this double-blind, randomized, parallel-group clinical trial, patients diagnosed with DHS and quali...

Purpose: To better characterize the frequency of Bosniak cyst class changes and identify predictors of change and progression. To determine the average growth rate of cysts and validate the safety of active surveillance. Materials and methods: Consecutive patients referred for management of complex cysts (>= Bosniak 2F) were included. All imagin...

Background: The fecal microbiome is associated with prostate cancer risk factors (obesity, inflammation) and can metabolize and produce various products that may influence cancer but have yet to be defined in prostate cancer. Objective: To investigate gut bacterial diversity, identify specific metabolic pathways associated with disease, and deve...

Efficiently producing transparent analyses may be difficult for beginners or tedious for the experienced. This implies a need for computing systems and environments that can efficiently satisfy reproducibility and accountability standards. To this end, we have developed a system, R package, and R Shiny application called adapr (Accountable Data Ana...

Introduction: Identify modifiable factors contributing to renal cell carcinoma in the PCLO to target disease prevention and reduce health care costs. Methods: The prostate, lung, colorectal, and ovarian database were queried for the primary outcome of kidney cancer. Demographics were investigated, specifically focusing on modifiable risk factors...

Muscle mass declines with age (sarcopenia) in both men and women resulting in impaired physical function and altered glucose metabolism. Endurance exercise training can mitigate and even reverse some of the changes in skeletal muscle structure and function, which are observed at advanced age. To gain insight into the potential mechanisms driving sa...