A clinical trial is being conducted in order to determine the efficacy of a new drug that will be used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. The efficacy of the medication will not only be determined by the physical improvement of symptoms but will also be determined by using a blood test to examine the concentration of C-reactive protein (an inflammatory marker) in an individual’s blood. If the researcher wants a margin of error for the level of C-reactive protein to be less than or equal to 1.5 mg/d and if the standard deviation for C-reactive protein concentrations among arthritis patients was previously documented at 6 mg/dL, how many patients should be recruited for each group of individuals in the study, assuming a 95% confidence interval will be used to quantify the mean differences between the control group and the treatment group?
