A collaborative study between the University of Otago,
the University of California, and Stanford University
What your participation will involve?
If you agree to participate, then this is what will happen:
We will arrange for you to visit our study facility at a time that is convenient for you. After you arrive, the following things will happen, in approximately the following order:
- 1. We will go over the study procedures and answer any questions you may have. You will then be asked to sign an Informed Consent Form. This is a requirement for any study that involves human subjects.
- 2. There will be an interview that will take about 45 minutes. We will ask you about where you have lived, worked and studied in Rotorua and during what periods. Other questions will cover certain medical conditions that your doctor may have diagnosed and there will be some questions about how often you smoke tobacco and drink alcohol. You will have the right not to answer any question(s) that you feel uncomfortable about answering.
- 3. We will ask you to carry out some simple psychological tests. Most of these will involve pencil and paper and one test will involve pressing a computer key. This will take about 45 minutes.
- 4. We will test your reflexes and how well you can feel light touch sensations (about 15 minutes).
- 5. There will be a test to identify whether you are allergic to certain common allergens, such as cats and pollens. This will involve very lightly pricking your arm with lancets. If positive, there will be a small itchy swelling like a mosquito bite that will disappear over about half an hour. This test will take about 10 minutes.
- 6. We will measure the level of nitric oxide in your exhaled breath. This involves blowing into a machine that measures this gas in your breath and tells us whether you have any lung inflammation (about 5 minutes).
- 7. We will test your lung function by getting you to blow into a machine called a spirometer. We will give you a bronchodilator (asthma puffer) and retest your lung function. This will take about 25 minutes, about 15 minutes of which is waiting for the bronchodilator to take effect. We will carry out some of the next tests while you are waiting.
- 8. We will accurately measure your weight and height (about 2 minutes).
- 9. If you do not know whether you have diabetes, we will do a test for this. This will involve a small finger-prick to obtain a very small blood sample, equivalent to one or two drops of blood. This will be put into a machine that will give us a reading. We will tell you the result. This will take about 5 minutes.
- 10. We will ask you to provide a small saliva sample into a container specially made for that purpose. This sample will provide a sample of your DNA. However, this sample will not be used unless results of this study show that further investigation involving DNA testing would be worthwhile. The samples will be retained indefinitely, for a minimum of 10 years. You can still participate in all the other components of the study even if you do not wish to provide a saliva sample. This procedure will take about 5 minutes.
- 11. We will give you a comprehensive eye examination, including testing your color vision. The eye tests will include taking some photographs of the lenses of your eye, to see if there is any evidence of cataract. For this purpose we will need to put in some eye drops and so you will be sensitive to light for a few hours. Because of this we will pay for taxis to get you to our study facility and home again at the end of the procedures. The eye tests will take about 40 minutes.
In total, all the procedures should take about 3 hours to complete.