Psychological morbidity in medical students after entering into clinical training Psychological morbidity among medical students

Psychological morbidity is emerging as animportant issue for medical students after entering clinical training due to extensiveworking hours. Students find themselves unable to balance competing demands on their time and cannot allocate appropriate time to family, spouses and even to themselves; this leads to complaints about exhaustion and lack of efficiency in their profession. Objective: To assess Psychological morbidity in interns, medical officers and residents Methods: a cross sectional study was conducted. A google form was designed with questions adopting from the three scales of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS). Question from all three categories of MBI-GS such as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment were considered. The form was distributed via email and Whatsapp to 87 house officers, medical officers and residents of six public healthcare facilities in Lahore. Responses were captured from 73 participants who completed the General Health questionnaire. Seven of these forms were filled by nurses, so in the present study only the response ofthose 66 participants who conformed to the study cross-section were considered. The results were analyzedusing SPSS version 22 for descriptive statistics and chi-square association. Results: A significant association was found between long working hours and emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment questions in particular. The findings suggests long working hours ruin the mental health of medical professionals, which ultimately produce psychological health impacts. Conclusions: It was concluded that these factors should be considered to reduce psychological morbidity in health professionals.  

Molecular and Biochemcial Characterization of Selected Wheat Landraces of Pakistan

Pakistani Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) germplasm consisting of 204 land races belonging to different parts of Pakistan were characterized for phenological pa rameters, disease resistance against stripe rust (Yr) and Karnal bunt (KB), seed struc ture and high molecular weight glutenin subunits. Only one landrace form Dir was re sistant to KB with less than 1% bunted grains. Four landraces were found to be resistant to Yr and moderately sensitive to KB. A positive correlation was found between tillers per plants, plant height, spikelet/spike, grain/spike, TKW and grain yield. Cluster anal ysis divided landraces into seven groups on the basis of morphological similarities. Not all landraces in a cluster belonged to the same geographical origin. A high throughput analysis based on digital imaging was carried out to find the association between grain size, shape and thousand kernel weight (TKW) in Pakistani wheat landraces using PCA and multiple regression. It was revealed that grain thickness has a maximum and direct effect on grain weight. Grain weight is less effected by horizontal area of seed. A total of forty-two different allelic combinations were found for HMW-GS. Higher frequency of Null and 2+12 were observed in this germplasm. The most frequent allelic combination was 2*, 17+18, 2+12 in 25 landraces. Allelic diversity at Glu-1 revealed that Glu-BI is the most diverse locus. Quality score ranged between 4-10, with 33 land races having the highest score of 10. xviii Functional markers were applied to detect various genes related to agronomic traits, quality and disease resistance. These markers have identified a large number of these landraces to have increased height, photoperiod insensitivity, spring habit, lower TKW, lower spike number and decreased yellow pigment content. Favourable alleles associated with drought resistance were present in higher frequencies. Genotyping by sequencing (GBS) was also conducted to understand the genetics of complex traits in these landraces. Awn length was found to be associated with genomic regions on 3B, 1D, 3D, 6A and 7A and plant height on 1D. Highest MTAs were detected for spike length on chromosome 1A, 1B, 2B, 2D, 4B, 5B, 6A, 6B, 7A and 3A. Grain per spike was found to be associated with four linked and one unlinked marker. Marker S2AL_U_919434 explained 22% of phenotypic variation and grain per spike was found to be associated with TKW.