Mice treated with certain statins intended to decrease blood pressure

Question

Mice treated with certain statins intended to decrease blood pressure also experienced drug-induced toxic myopathy, also known as muscular degeneration. Scientists hypothesize that this may have occurred because the statins cause an over-activation of creatine kinases, which are known to cause muscular degeneration.

Which of the following experiments would yield the most useful results for analyzing the scientists’ hypothesis?

A. Administering statins to mice with increased creatine kinase activity and observing creatine kinase activity.

B. Injecting mice with a creatine kinase inhibitor before administering the statins and then monitoring muscle tissue response.

C. Injecting mice with creatine kinase inhibitors and then monitoring muscle tissue response.

D. Injecting mice with muscle repair medication and then monitoring levels of muscular response.

E. Measuring mice’s level of muscular myopathy, administering a creatine kinase inhibitor, and then measuring myopathy once more

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cdrectenwald · Answer

Imo Option B would yield the most useful results because it directly tests the hypothesis. By injecting a creatine kinase inhibitor before administering the statins, scientists can observe whether the inhibition of creatine kinase activity reduces the incidence or severity of the muscle tissue response. If the mice exhibit less muscular degeneration with the inhibitor, it would support the hypothesis that creatine kinases play a role in the statin induced myopathy

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VivekSri · Answer

OA is B.

Now we can easily understand by simple analogy, if doctor prescribes sometimes medication they also provide some Tablets that reduces the amount of acid produced in the stomach, why so? Because they think this medicine can produce acid and can form gas.

Just like here -> Doctor hypothesize that statins cause an over-activation of creatine kinases. How to resolve this?
Injecting mice with a creatine kinase inhibitor before administering the statins and then monitoring muscle tissue response.
If this resolves it we can definetly say,it is beacuse of this, issue has happened otherwise no.

Let us start with option elimination:

A. Administering statins to mice with increased creatine kinase activity and observing creatine kinase activity. -> This is wrong, it just means person is suffering from acidity and you giving medicine which will result in more acidity.

B. Injecting mice with a creatine kinase inhibitor before administering the statins and then monitoring muscle tissue response.
Exactly what we thought, Ans is this.

C. Injecting mice with creatine kinase inhibitors and then monitoring muscle tissue response. -> Even if we Inject mice with creatine kinase inhibitors, we don't know about is this statin responsible for this? so wrong.

D. Injecting mice with muscle repair medication and then monitoring levels of muscular response. -> Even if we do this, we don't know about is this statin responsible for this? so wrong.

E. Measuring mice’s level of muscular myopathy, administering a creatine kinase inhibitor, and then measuring myopathy once more-> Even if we do this, we don't know about is this statin responsible for this? so wrong.

Bunuel · Answer

VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:

When you are asked to determine which experiment would yield useful results for analyzing a particular problem, recognize that this means that you are dealing with a (slightly less obvious) Useful to Evaluate problem. With any Useful to Evaluate problem, remember that you first want to look at the stimulus itself to figure out what the scientists or analysts are trying to determine. Then look for the gap - what piece of information is missing that could potentially either prove their hypothesis or disprove it?

The stimulus states that mice treated with statins experienced drug-induced muscular degeneration and that the scientists think this might have been cause by the statins over-activating something called creatine kinase (which is known to cause muscular degeneration). Notice that the hypothesis has to do with cause and effect: statins cause an over-activation of creatine kinase, which causes muscular degeneration. But what if the statins directly caused the degeneration instead of causing that intermediate step? Choice (B) is the only option that accounts for this possibility. By first administering a creatine kinase blocker, scientists can ensure that the effect is caused because the statins activate the creatine kinase rather than because the statins directly damage muscles. Choice (B) is therefore correct.

Among the other answers, choices (A) and (D) can be eliminated because they don't mention creatine kinase at all. Choice (C) can be eliminated because it doesn't mention the administering the statin. Since you're looking for the mechanism by which the statin causes muscular degeneration. Choice (E) can be eliminated because it's already known that creatine kinase can cause muscular myopathy - you don't need to establish that again, so (E) can be eliminated.

Pranavsawant · Answer

There is a glaring problem with B which most people have not noticed. Let's say you feed them the inhibitor, then feed the statins and measure creatine kinase activity. If the activity increases, then we can say that yes, statins do indeed cause an over-activation cause despite the inhibitor we are still seeing an increased creatine kinase activity.

However, if there is so such increase in creatine kinase activity or even if there is a decrease after feeding them statins, we cannot conclude that statins don't increase creatine kinase activity. It might very well be possible that because of the dominant effects of the inhibitor, the statins did increase creatine kinase activity but it could not increase it enough to counter the inhibiot's effects. So we can't make the conclusion that the hypothesis is wrong. In both cases, the hypothesis may be correct.

Now let's come to option A. Here we are offering statins to the mice with increase creatine kinase activity. If after feeding statins, creatine kinase activity further increases, then yes statins do have the intended effect. However, if it doesn't then we can make the case that statins aren't the reason for increased muscular degeneration. Bit of a gap there but A makes a lot more sense than B which introduces an extra variable that might completely skew the argument.

Mice treated with certain statins intended to decrease blood pressure

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Mice treated with certain statins intended to decrease blood pressure

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