BME100 f2013:W900 Group16 L1

BME 100 Fall 2013	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
OUR TEAM Laura Stanovich Aakriti Gupta Meilin Ossanna Paul Lim Kevin Liao LAB 1 WRITE-UP Independent and Dependent Variables The independent variable is the dose of the lipopolysaccharide. The dependent variable is the inflammatory protein (Inflammotin) in the elderly. Experimental Design Our experiment will have eight groups. These groups will each have twenty people in them from the ages of 65 to 85. We believe the elderly is defined to start at the age of 65. the federal health benefits such as Medicare and Social Security begin at age 65. Therefore we are taking the federal elderly age as the lower end of our pool for each group. We consider age 85 to be the cut off because we feel health issues beyond the age are less controllable. The first group will be our control group, and they will not be taking any lipopolysaccharide. We will increase doses by 2 mg per group up to 14 mg. Each of these groups will have their protein tested from blood sample using the ELISA test. The objective of the experiment is to determine the lowest amount of lipopolyscarride that will increase inflammation protein in blood. We believe that by increasing each dose by 2 mg per group will create smaller increments to determine the lowest amount needed to increase inflammation. We will administer each group by giving them a pill with their assigned dosage. The test subjects will receive this pill on a daily basis for a week so the inflammation is not uncontrolled. The consecutive three weeks, we will take their blood sample and perform an ELISA test to determine the levels of inflammation protein in their blood. We decided to collect three different blood samples over the three week duration to determine not only the inflammation levels but also how well each subject's body metabolizes the pill. We use the twenty-four collective test results (8 groups with 3 sub-tests per group)and perform a ANOVA test. We then look at the p-value of the test to determine whether or not the doses are statistically significant. ELISA Test http://virology-online.com/general/Test5.htm Subject Selection In our experiment, our subject selection will be taken randomly from the age group 65 years to 85 years. Experimental subjects must not have medication that includes lipopolysaccharide to keep results from being unintentionally falsified. Any race/ethnicity will be admitted into the experiment to observe if certain ethnic genes affect inflammation protein presence. http://housegirlhaley.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/the-elderly-say-the-darndest-things-slp-fun-part-1/ Sources of Error and Bias A potential source of error is the variability between subjects such as gender, ethnicity, diet/exercise, medical conditions, and other medications. To control possible errors and biases, prior to experimentation, each subject will undergo a blood test to document health conditions and initial starting levels of blood content to later be able to compare blood results after the lipopolysaccharide doses. The experiment will be a double blind study to ensure there is no participant or experimenter bias. The patients will not know which dosage they received and patients that take 0mg of lipopolysaccharide will receive placebos. The patients will be observed and the data will be collected by someone other than the experimenter.