BME100 s2016:Group10 W1030AM L1

BME 100 Spring 2016	Home People Lab Write-Up 1 | Lab Write-Up 2 | Lab Write-Up 3 Lab Write-Up 4 | Lab Write-Up 5 | Lab Write-Up 6 Course Logistics For Instructors Photos Wiki Editing Help
Team 10 Curtis McLoud Jade Nelson Ekta Patel Joe Schreiber Gavin Steeber Jordan Todd LAB 1 WRITE-UP Independent and Dependent Variables The independent variable is the dosage of lipopolysaccharide (in mg). This is the independent variable because the dosage of lipopolysaccharide is what is being manipulated. The dependent variable is the amount of inflammotin in the patients using ELISA. This is the dependent variable because the production of inflammotin is what is being measured in the patients. Experimental Design Groups There will be 6 groups used for the experiment. Because 0 mg should produce no inflammotin, that will be the control group. Similarly, because there is prior work that shows that 10 mg does increase inflammotin protein levels, we have a 10 mg group to create the baseline. From 0 mg to 10 mg, we create four more dosage groups to determine the lowest dosage that increases the amount of inflammotin protein. Each group increases by 2 mg. 1. 0 mg lipopolysaccharide 2. 2 mg lipopolysaccharide 3. 4 mg lipopolysaccharide 4. 6 mg lipopolysaccharide 5. 8 mg lipopolysaccharide 6. 10 mg lipopolysaccharide Age Subjects in each group will be in between the ages of 65-75 years old. Number of subjects per group There will be 10 subjects per group (50 subjects total) to ensure that the data can be accurate. The subjects will be randomly assigned to the six groups with 10 subjects in each group. Each patient group will undergo ELISA testing to determine their initial protein level. After the initial protein level measurement, patients will receive their designated dosage of lipopolysaccharide. Once the dosage has been administered, patients will undergo a second ELISA screening to measure protein levels. After the results are gathered from all five groups, the change from initial to final inflammotin levels will be recorded. These results will be analyzed to determine the lowest dosage of lipopolysaccharide that causes an increase of inflammotin protein in the elderly. Subject Selection Our subjects will be in the age range 65-75 (senior citizens). We will post flyers and ads for our study in senior centers in the surrounding areas of Tempe (such as communities like Sun Lakes) describing our experiment and parameters. The subjects will be volunteers and will need to complete a preliminary health screening to ensure that the subjects do not have a pre-existing condition or anomaly that will affect the baseline inflammotin protein. Those who show up for the experiment will be added to a pool. From there, subjects who meet the health requirements will be randomly assigned to one of the five groups based on a random number generator. Although subjects who volunteer for the study will be volunteering for a specific reason, we cannot allow completely random patients to participate without consent. Becayse of this, there will be patient bias in the study, but a bias that we will take into account. The patients in the 0 mg group will be given a placebo pill and their inflammotin protein levels will be used as the control. Sources of Error and Bias Potential sources of error or bias can include: The volunteers may already have existing conditions that would cause higher levels of the inflammotin protein. This can cause inaccurate data when measuring protein levels. We would control for these errors by having the preliminary health screening to ensure that patients do not have abnormal levels of inflammotin. Another source of error is volunteer bias. Since subjects can only be chosen from a group of elderly people that volunteer, there could potentially be inaccurate results since the subjects are not chosen from a random sample of the entire population of elderly people. There is no way to completely overcome this bias since the subjects must volunteer for the trial, but the effects of this bias can be minimized through multiple trials of different demographics. Additionally, another source of error can include the inability to dose patients at the exact same time. Patients will likely have different schedules of availability to begin the dosage. In order to ensure that patients will all have the same period of time undergoing the dosage, the start and end dates will have to be monitored. Patients will have the same amount of time in between the first initial inflammotin measure and the final inflammotin measure after the dosage.