Background:In many patients, emotional stress may exacerbate acne. Psychological problems such as social phobias, low self-esteem, or depression may also occur as a result of acne. The presence of acne may have some negative effect on the quality of life, self-esteem, and mood of the affected patients. While some studies have been undertaken about anxiety, depression, and personality patterns in patients with acne, only a few studies have been done to identify specific personality disorders in patients with acne. Furthermore, there is a dearth of data regarding the effect of personality disorder on the psychological states of the patients which prompted us to undertake the present study.Methodology:This was a descriptive cross-sectional study, undertaken in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital in Eastern India. Consecutive patients suffering from severe (Grade 3 and 4) acne, attending the Dermatology Outpatient Department, aged above 18 years were included to the study.Results:A total of 65 patients were evaluated with a mean age of 26 years. Personality disorder was present in 29.2% of patients. The diagnosed personality disorders were obsessive compulsive personality disorder (n = 9, 13.8%), anxious (avoidant) personality disorder (n = 6, 9.2%), and borderline personality disorder (n = 2, 3%), mixed personality disorder (n = 2, 3%). All patients with personality disorder had some psychiatric comorbidity. Patients having personality disorder had higher number of anxiety and depressive disorders which were also statistically significant.Conclusion:The present study highlights that personality disorders and other psychiatric comorbidities are common in the setting of severe acne.

Thermal spike model (TSM) is presently a widely accepted mechanism of swift heavy ion (SHI) -matter interaction. It provides explanation to various SHI induced effects including mixing across interfaces. The model involves electron-phonon (e-p) coupling to predict the evolution of lattice temperature with time. SHI mixing is considered to be a result of diffusion in transient molten state thus achieved. In this work, we assess this conception primarily via tuning the e-p coupling strength by taking a series Pd1−xNix of a completely solid soluble binary, and then observing 100 MeV Au ion induced mixing across Pd1−xNix/Si interfaces. The extent of mixing has been parametrised by the irradiation induced change ∆σ 2 in variances of Pd and Ni depth profiles derived from X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The x-dependence of ∆σ 2 follows a curve that is concave upward with a prominent minimum. Theoretically, e-p coupling strength determined using density functional theory has been used to solve the equations appropriate to TSM, and then an equivalent quantity L 2 proportional to ∆σ 2 has been calculated. L 2 , however, increases monotonically with x without any minimum, bringing out a convincing disparity between experiment and theory. Perhaps some mechanisms more than the TSM plus the transient molten state diffusion are operative, which can not be foreseen at this point of time.

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