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Aspartame Case

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Aspartame is an artificial sweetener that was found in the mid-1983, it was considered as a low-calorie sweeteners that could substitute sugars. Ralph G. Walton, Robert Hudak, and Ruth J. Green-Waite (1993) performed a study to find out whether patients with mood disorders are vulnerable to negative reactions of aspartame in “Adverse Reactions to Aspartame: Double-Blind Challenge in Patients from a Vulnerable Population”. Initially they recruited 40 participant for the study which included patients with a depression history and also people without any of psychiatric history, but the study ended up with only collecting results from 13 people because the study was stopped by the Institutional Review Board regarding some severe reactions including eye problems and conjunctival bleeding. The study divided the trial into two sections for 20 days, each subject is double-blindly tested with both aspartame and placebo randomly in the first week or the second week to find out the effect of aspartame on the …show more content…

They performed the experiment in 20 days, which divided into 2 sections of aspartame test and placebo test with each period last for a week and before each period begins, there will be a 3-day “washout” period to make sure there is no reaction from previous section test. Before the first section, all participants were asked to cease consuming all products which contain aspartame. The study performs a double-blind experiment, where both of the participants and the testers do not know the test subject. They are randomly selected to take the aspartame or the placebo during the first and the second week periods. This is a good way to find out whether any different or same reaction of aspartame intake on those two different

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