Independent Variable: Our goal is to measure the minimum amount of lipopolysaccharide needed to induce the presence of inflammatin, thus, the amount, in milligrams(mg), of lipopolysaccharide given to the test subject is our independent variable.
Dependent Variable: Presence and amount of inflammotin in test subject after being given the assigned dosage of lipopolysaccharide.
Experimental Design
Groups
6 groups total:
Each of the six groups will be given dosages of the agent lipopolysaccharide, beginning at 0mg for the control and ending with 10mg administered to Group 6, increased between groups by 2mg:
Group 1 (Control Group) will be given 0mg of lipopolysaccharide;
Group 2 will be given a 2mg dosage;
Group 3 will be given a 4mg dosage
Group 4 will be given a 6mg dosage
Group 5 will be given a 8mg dosage
Group 6 will be given a 10mg dosage
Note: Prior work has shown that a 10mg dose of lipopolysaccharide will induce the presence of Inflammotin.
Age Test subject will be selected from within the ages of 60-80 years old.
Number of subjects per group
Twenty (20) subjects will be assigned to each experimental group.
five (5) people within each age range, as described below, will be in each group.
five (5) people within the ages of 60-64;
five (5) people from within the ages of 65-70;
five (5) people within the ages of 70-74; and,
five (5) people within the ages of 75-80.
Subject Selection
Requirements:
Within the ages of 60-80 years old.
Only subjects without the protein Inflammotin in their system naturally will be selected for the test phase to prevent prior levels to skew results.
Subjects will have to provide health records for review and only subjects with minimal health problems will be accepted.
Current medications and health issues will be evaluated as to assure that being given lipopolysaccharide will not negatively affect their health or the tests.
Important To assure adequate randomization and reduce bias in the results from oversampling a singular group in society, during the selection process, people from various ethnic backgrounds and genders will be selected. To diminish the bias of oversampling an age range, each group will be given one subject from each age range.
Sources of Error and Bias
Sources of error: 1. If test subjects know they are receiving a dosage of lipopolysaccharide, as opposed to a placebo, they may naturally develop an increase in inflammatin and bias the results. 2. Improper collecting and testing procedures of blood samples could lead to skewed results. 3. Unaccounted outside influences, such as diet, stress, and etc., could result in an increase of inflammatin in the test subject that would result in a potential false positive.
Controls for the sources of error: 1. The experiment will be designed as a double-blind experiment. Thus, researchers and subjects will not know, and cannot instinctively react to the knowledge of being administered lipopolysaccharide. 2. To combat the improper collecting of data, multiple samples will be collected and compared to previous samples of the test subject to eliminate any outliers in the information collected. 3. To diminish the presence and influence of unaccounted outside influences, interviews and surveys will be conducted to allow the researchers knowledge of potential issues and give adequate rational for understanding any inflammotin levels that lay outside the expected results.
BME 100 Fall 2015
