Yoga is an effective technique of stress reduction within the medical population: a biochemical study in MBBS students of BRD Medical College, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

Background: Medicine is a profession with high-stress prevalence. There are many stress markers but cortisol is one of the commonly used stress marker. Stress begins in the first year of medical carrier and increases with subsequent years of medical education. There is a decrease in overall academic performance and many health-related adverse effects due to stress. In this study, yoga was performed in the first year MBBS students of BRD Medical College, Gorakhpur and the impact of yoga in stress reduction was studied using serum cortisol as stress a marker.Methods: Study groups, yoga and control contained 26 and 27 subjects including male and female MBBS students. Yoga group practiced selected yogic asana, pranayama, and yoga nidra for 3 months. The control group as a stress marker had been kept in touch and allowed to go on their usual activity as before. Morning (8.00 AM to 9.00 AM) serum cortisol level was used as a stress marker in both group, pre and post-study.Results: There was a significant reduction in morning serum cortisol level (stress level) in yoga group (p-value = 0.0271) but there was no significant change in morning serum cortisol level of the control group (p-value = 0.8573).Conclusions: Yoga is an effective stress reduction technique for medical students. Yoga classes should be introduced in the first year of the medical carrier under the supervision of expert physiologists. This may lead to the implantation of a healthy lifestyle in our future healthcare providers. Yogic practice by health care providers may have long term positive impacts on our healthcare system

Is yoga an effective modality of stress reduction within medical population; a qualitative study within MBBS students of BRD medical college, Gorakhpur

Background: Stress is very common in medical professionals. Stress begins in the first year of medical school and increases with subsequent years of medical life. Stress decreases overall performance and had a multitude of health-related adverse effect. Yoga has been tried as a stress reduction technique in different populations. In present study yoga was performed in the 1st year MBBS students and impact on stress reduction was studied using PSS-10 stress scale.Methods: Study groups, yoga and control contained 26 and 27 subjects respectively. The yoga group practiced selected yogic asana, pranayama, and yoga nidra 1hour daily 6days a week for 3months. Control group kept in touch and allowed their usual activity as before. The PSS-10 scale used to measure the level of stress in both groups pre and post study.Results: There was a highly significant reduction in the PSS-10 Score (stress level) in the yoga group (P Value <0.0001) but there was no significant change in the PSS-10 Score of control group (P Value = 0.2930).Conclusions: Yoga is an effective modality of stress reduction technique in 1st year medical students. Therefore, yoga should be introduced as a part of the curricula in the first year of medical school. This may be taken as the 1st step in implantation of healthy lifestyle in future health care providers

Cannabis sativa L.: a potential natural reservoir of sugarcane grassy shoot phytoplasmas in India

Cannabis sativa plants growing nearby sugarcane fields affected with grassy shoot disease at Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, India, showed severe witches’ broom symptoms. The DNA from symptomatic Cannabis and sugarcane samples was isolated and subjected to nested PCR assays with universal phytoplasma-specific primer pairs (P1/P7 and R16F2n/R16R2). A DNA fragment of ~ 1.2 kbp was amplified in all the symptomatic samples of sugarcane and Cannabis with R16F2n/R16R2 primer pair but was absent in non-symptomatic samples. Pairwise sequence comparison, phylogeny and in silico RFLP analysis of 16S rDNA sequences confirmed the identity of a rice yellow dwarf phytoplasma group-related strain (16SrXI-B) associated with Cannabis which suggested its role as potential natural reservoir of SCGS phytoplasma in nature

New cost-effective human leukocyte antigen testing algorithm for screening of human leukocyte antigen-matched related donor in thalassemia major patient pretransplant workup: A single-center study from resource-constrained settings

Introduction: India has a huge disease burden of thalassemia major with an estimated 40 million carriers and over a million thalassemia major patients. Very few patients are optimally treated, and the standard of care “hematopoietic stem cell transplant” (HSCT) is out of reach for most patients and their families. The cost of HSCT is significant, and a substantial proportion of it goes to human leukocyte antigen (HLA) testing of family members (HLA screening) in hope of getting a matched related donor (MRD) for HSCT. The aim of this study was to establish that a new proposed testing algorithm of HLA typing would be more cost-effective as compared to the conventional HLA screening within MRD families for possible HSCT. Material and Methods: Buccal swab samples of 177 thalassemia patients and their prospective family donors (232) were collected. Using a new HLA testing algorithm, samples were tested for HLA typing in a sequential manner (first HLA-B, then HLA-A, and finally HLA-DR) using the sequence-specific oligonucleotide probe method on the Luminex platform. Results: The new sequential HLA-A, HLA-B, and HLA-DRB1 testing algorithm showed a 49.1% reduction in cost compared to the conventional HLA testing algorithm. Furthermore, 40 patients (22.59%) were found to have HLA-MRD within the family among other samples that were tested. Conclusion: The new HLA testing algorithm proposed in the present study for identifying MRD for HSCT resulted in a substantial reduction in the cost of HSCT workup