Inferential Statistics (m4c) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Inferential Statistics (m4c) - Essay Example Therefore, identification of the population among whom the new and the current combination of drugs are to be compared is necessary. Let the population thus selected be the adult and adolescent population in the United States. There are literature considering differential effectiveness of highly active antiretroviral therapy among patients of different gender and race. (King et al., 2008; Campo, Alvarez, Santos, & Latorre, 2005). However, part of the difference may be attributed to availability of the drug, following the prescribed regimen and lifestyle, rather than any inherent difference in genetic composition. Nevertheless, it will be a good policy at the initial stage to limit the experiment among adult and adolescent Caucasian males to protect against possible confounding effects. Once the population is identified, a sample of specific size needs to be selected. The sample size will depend on the power of the testing procedure, which is outside of the purview of the present consideration. Current guidelines recommend start of antiretroviral therapy when the disease has progressed to WHO Stage III when CD4 cell count is less than 350/ÃŽ ¼l. This may be taken to be the baseline criterion for inclusion. Also, the standard guidelines for adherence to the protocol, testing for baseline resistance etc must be satisfied to be included in the drug testing. Any one of these regimens needs to be chosen for the new drug to be compared against. Ideally this experiment would be a matched case-control study. Two HIV/AIDS patients with very similar profiles with respect to advancement of disease, CD4 cell counts, age, sexual orientation and other possible factors that may have bearings on the disease are to be randomly assigned either to the cocktail drug regimen or to the new drug regimen. However, there may be ethical consideration to such assignment. Without informed