The indepedent variable in this experiment will the dose of an inflammation inducing agent called Lipopolysaccharide. The dependent variable is the new discovered protein called Inflammotin found in the elderly.
Experimental Design
Groups
In our experiment, we are going to have three groups. The groups will receive lipopolysaccharide dosages of 2.5 mg,5 mg,and 7.5 mg. We decided to lower the dosage of lipopolysaccharide because it has already been found that 10 mg increases the inflammatory protein (inflammotin) levels in elderly subjects, and we wanted to find the lowest dosage that increases the inflammatory protein levels. A control of this experiment will be measuring the level of the inflammatory protein in each subject prior to receiving a dose and then remeasuring the inflammatory protein levels in each individual after receiving the dose to compare results.
Number of subjects per group
Each group is going to have 8 people per dosage level. This ensures us to have multiple results and possible outcomes that could occur in each group and provide more data for statistical analysis.
Additional Experimental Details
Each subject will go through preliminary testing such as a physical, background information, and blood test to check inflammotin protein levels. Subjects will come in the morning and receive blood test and take pill levels. They will also stay at the facility in order to ensure a more controlled environment for 4 hours. During this time, subjects will not be allowed food or drink (except when taking the pill with water if needed) and physical activity. After, subjects will be tested once again for inflammotin protein levels and data will be collected.
Subject Selection
For our experiment we will select subjects who have been in the are for at least ten years. The subjects will be between the ages of sixty-five and seventy, preferably with minimal medications. The subjects we are looking for all have the same basic lifestyles with no smoking, drug, or alcohol problems. Our subjects will include an equal number of men and women, twelve men and twelve women. To select our subjects we will start with an online survey to determine their eligibility which we will look over and decide which candidates are the most suitable. Then the candidates that we do pick will undergo a physical at the start to determine their health eligibility, during which we will ask more questions about their lifestyles to determine if they fit the criteria for our subjects.
Sources of Error and Bias
(What are some of the potential sources of error or biases that could affect your results and how would you control for them?)
Although we are conducting a random sample to select elderly people for this experiment, there is no way to ensure that we can generate a completely homogeneous sample. In other words, we must account for several confounding variables including genetic or allergic reaction to the inflammation inducing agent, gender, diet, and health conditions. For instance, inflammotin may only be induced at a much higher dosage of lipopolysaccharide in subjects with genetic traits resistant to inflammation; alternately, it may be induced at a much lower dosage of lipopolysaccharide in subjects who have arthritis. The way in which we can account for such variation and bias is by increasing the sample size so that there are more subjects in each treatment group and the experiment can be repeated more times (this would have to be done within the limitations of the lab's budget). Another source of error in our experiment is that we treat the dosages of lipopolysaccharides as discrete values (2.5 mg, 5.0 mg, 7.5 mg) when truly the minimum dosage needed to induce the inflammotin protein can assume any value between the range of 0 mg-10 mg. Therefore, we would need to find the exact minimum dosage required to induce the protein by using graphical or statistical analysis. We could plot the dosages of lipopolysaccharide and protein levels, find a line or curve of best fit, and generate an equation or use other statistical and graphical techniques to predict what would be the minimum dosage required to induce inflammotin. Lastly, the experiment could be affected by human error or bias. For instance, an experimenter may run the ELISA and find that the protein levels are too high for a dosage of 2.5 mg of lipopolysaccharide. Hoping to save money and preserve the accuracy of the data, the experimenter does not take the subject's blood again and throws out the data from that particular subject. To avoid such a situation, we could double-blind our experiment, in which the experimenters would not know which subjects' blood they are dealing with and the subjects would not know the dosages of the pills they are taking.
BME 100 Fall 2013
